Hospital settles lawsuit for abandoning homeless patient in LA

Associated Press
Friday 22 April 2016 00.40 BST

A fourth Los Angeles-area hospital in less than three years has settled a lawsuit over a chronic problem in the nation’s second-largest city turning homeless patients out on the streets after they have been discharged, sometimes while still needing medical attention.

Without acknowledging fault, Good Samaritan Hospital near downtown Los Angeles settled for $450,000 and agreed to follow protocols to properly release homeless patients, city attorney Mike Feuer said Thursday. That brings the amount of such settlements with area hospitals to $1.9m since January 2014.

“There is no place in our society for patient dumping,” Feuer said. “We all know how vulnerable any of us would be when we’re released from a medical facility. Imagine how much more vulnerable one would feel if one were released and had no place to go.”

The Good Samaritan case involves a former patient who was found on the streets in December 2014 with a visibly infected leg, the city attorney’s office said. He was found a couple of miles from downtown after being released from the hospital’s emergency room with only a bus token, Feuer said. He had to be hospitalized again for his infection.

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