No More Hospital Duping (or Dumping!)

by Bruce Allison/PNN

Around 8:00 am on a cool San Francisco morning, I walked into the Kaiser Hospital and met James Chionsini, a member of Health Care Action Team. We sat in the lobby and began speaking with Lionel Stanford, a formerly homeless senior from Honduras.

We were at the hospital for a meeting with the Hospital Council of Northern and Central California on the issue of hospital dumping of homeless and low-income patients into shelters and onto the streets in the City. State law requires that a meeting be held in order to address "homeless patient dumping" and we were there to make sure our voices were included in the report that would be sent to the state government. After the first meeting was closed off to service providers and advocates The Health Care Action Team (HAT) and the Coalition on Homelessness had protested and demanded another open meeting be held.

While we were talking in the lobby, the President of the Hospital Council arrived. I followed him closely, as he was acting suspicious. At the last minute, he changed the location of the meeting to a new place saying the first would be too small. He did not post signs about the change as required. Instead he posted notice of a change of an agenda item.

Then I yelled down from the mezzanine level to James where the meeting had been moved to, and he quickly posted signs.

With the help of James' last-minute signs, all people including, members of the Homeless Coalition, the chairperson of the Mayor's Disability Council, Anna Lolis and her service dog Henry, Lionel, the Head of HANK homeless outreach team, Buster's Place drop-in shelter Director Hank Williams, and all the hospital officials were finally able to find the meeting.

The President of the Hospital Council started the meeting. First the council wanted to know about homeless patient dumping happening in San Francisco and beyond. Being a poverty and disability scholar myself, I know all about the nightmare of hellthcare in this country for poor people and am extremely familiar with the illegal hospital dumping that's been occurring.

Since I was born, the City has gone from having 14 hospitals down to 7 while the population of San Francisco has not decreased. The issue of patient dumping is clearly connected to these hospital closures because there are simply not enough facilities to support the need. Hospitals are kicking out homeless patients and dumping them on the street with I.V.s still sticking out of their arms.

I told the council that out-of-City hospitals are also dumping to the shelters in San Francisco, mainly the Sheeton medical center, in order to side step the law and say they are not dumping in their own county. Then Hank Wilson brought up the fact that people from hospitals are dumped constantly at Buster's Place.

After listening to the presented information, the council adjourned the meeting and closed by saying that a record will be release next year after all the hospitals in the State have reported their problems to be looked at by the State Assembly.

There will also be another hearing on Thursday, December 6th at San Francisco's City Hall #263. All community members are urged to show up and testify to let the state government know about the problems with patient dumping in San Francisco.

Please stay tuned for a follow up report by poverty scholar and PNN columnist Bruce Allison.