it comes in pints?

So what is her daughter doing?

Squatters should simply be thrown out the door.

Disgruntled patient hasn't budged from hospital for a year
Peter Fimrite, Chronicle Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 1, 2005
Sarah Nome is not sick, but nobody can find a way to get her out of the hospital.

The 82-year-old Marin County woman cannot walk and says she has no place to go, so she has remained planted in a hospital bed at Kaiser Permanente San Rafael Medical Center for the past year.

So where is her family?

Despite every effort by Kaiser officials to get her out, Nome has refused to leave or pay the $3,090 a day that the hospital charges to put her up. She said she will continue squatting at Kaiser until a place is found in Marin where she can live and get the treatment she requires.

Squatters should be thrown out on their asses, or in this case, taken to her daughter's house.

"When you pay Kaiser insurance month after month for 50 years like I have, you expect to be treated like a good patient and a human being," Nome said the other day from her hospital bed.

It's medical insurance. That means medical treatment, not a hotel.

"If I had known that Kaiser would take me for only a couple of days and then would expect my family to take care of me, I would have paid my family what I paid for insurance."

That's what family is for. So what the hell is her family doing?

Unwilling to forcibly remove Nome, hospital officials have filed a lawsuit demanding that she pay the $1.2 million in room and other charges that she has run up outside her Kaiser health plan coverage. The suit also challenges as fraudulent the recent transfer of Nome's San Anselmo home to her daughter.

Oh, that's what they're doing. Hiding assets.

Lawyers for the hospital even went to court and got an eviction notice, but it was never enforced. Their offer last month to put Nome up temporarily at Kaiser's skilled nursing site in San Leandro was summarily rejected. Now, they say, it is up to Nome's family to find her a permanent place to stay.

So she's too good for a skilled nursing facility?

"She occupies a hospital bed that is needed for people with acute-care needs," said Stanley Watson, senior counsel for Kaiser Foundation Hospitals. "Our members pay dues to get medically necessary benefits. We don't sell housing."

No kidding.

Nome is no stranger to the folks of San Anselmo, where for decades she was a City Hall gadfly. She ran five times for town council between 1988 and 1997, never coming close to winning.

Why am I not surprised by this paragraph?

The current mess began in August 2002, when Nome's legs suddenly broke as she was washing dishes. She said her bones had been damaged by blood-thinning medicine prescribed by doctors at Kaiser.

After several weeks, the bones were finally set, and she was admitted to a nursing home. Disputes about the quality of her care led to a lawsuit by Nome against Kaiser and the Greenbrae Care Center alleging neglect and abuse.

The only thing not in dispute is that Nome lost the use of her legs and was brought back to Kaiser in January 2004 for a psychiatric evaluation. She said the transfer was against her will.

Nome was found to be in good mental health, but the care center refused to take her back, purportedly because she did not pay her bills.

Oh.

Shortly after that, she was approved for discharge, but, Watson said, she rejected attempts by the hospital to find her a suitable care center and would not participate in discharge planning.

So basically, she's a troublemaker.

Besides the San Leandro facility, Nome said the hospital offered to send her to only one other place, in Livermore, which she thought was too far from home. In retaliation, she said, the hospital staff has taken the television out of her room and has stopped delivering newspapers.

That's some pretty mild retaliation. If I quit paying my bills, they'd take my house away and throw me out into the street.

"I have never refused to leave. I just said I didn't want to live there (in Livermore)," she said. "I was born and raised in Marin, I've lived all my life in Marin, and I expect to die in Marin."

Please.

The standoff, though bizarre, highlights a growing crisis in health care for the elderly, especially with Baby Boomers approaching retirement age. The amount and quality of covered health care often falls far below the expectations of senior citizens...

People like Nome pay for insurance all their lives and expect a certain level of care when they get old.

Here's an interesting thing about insurance: you have to keep paying or you no longer have insurance. Here's another interesting thing: You get what you pay for. I don't recall hearing of any insurance that guarantees whatever level of care strikes your fancy in whatever location you so desire. And I never knew that Kaiser insurance was supposed to cover long term care. That's what "long-term care" insurance is for.

So, health care advocates say, it should not come as a surprise that they get angry when they discover their needs are not covered -- even if some don't complain and few take their grievances to anywhere near the extreme that Nome has.

That was an interesting little word game there. Their needs are already covered. Their expectations are entirely different, and apparently unrealistic. Maybe somebody needs a little dose of reality.

"It does point out that there is a lack of long-term care policy in this country," said Anthony Wright, the executive director of the advocacy group Health Access California.

We have such a policy. It's called "Medicare", and it's a safety net not a replacement for family and financial planning.

Watson said he understands Nome's desire to live as close as she can to the community she was raised in, but, he asked, "on whose dime?"

"It is an interesting perspective to believe you are allowed to stay in a hospital at your own convenience when you don't need acute care," Watson said. "Any one of us can understand that it would be desirable to identify just the kind of facility you would like, but that is not a covered benefit under the Kaiser health plan."

No kidding.

And again, where is her damn family? What happened to the tradition of families taking care of their own? This woman's daughter seems to have taken ownership of her house; if, as the story seems to imply, the house is in Marin County, it's a sizeable asset that could be put toward her care, but apparently the family wants all her "needs" taken care of for free.

Posted by Ken S at March 1, 2005 07:04 AM | TrackBack (0) |