Media Probe Reveals Illegal Evictions At Indiana Nursing Homes; Weak Rules Enforcement Leads To Booting As Cheap, Easy Way To Unload Unwanted Patients

In Indianapolis, Indiana, The Indianapolis Star reports:

• Nursing homes are allowed to evict residents, but only for certain reasons. And only after telling the residents they have a right to appeal. And only if the nursing home has found another suitable home for the residents. That's the law. But the law isn't always reality.

• An investigation by The Indianapolis Star found numerous examples of what the state's ombudsman for long-term care calls "a major problem": nursing homes evicting patients without regard for their rights.

• In one case, an Auburn facility dumped a resident at an emergency room and refused to take him back, leaving him stranded at the hospital for three weeks until he could find another home. In another case, a Bedford home tried to evict a brain-damaged teenager who had no safe place to go.(1)

• The Star also found that the state almost never punishes nursing homes, even after it has been made aware that a facility is violating state and federal laws. "I think if we had a better enforcement system or a more punitive enforcement system, people would quit" wrongly evicting residents, said long-term care ombudsman Arlene Franklin of the state's Family and Social Services Administration. "If there were a harsher penalty for that, they wouldn't do so many inappropriate discharges."

• The eviction rules, based on two-decade-old federal legislation, aim to protect residents from being capriciously tossed out or threatened with eviction. Instead, said Franklin -- the top state official charged with representing the interests of nursing home residents -- a lack of state enforcement has made eviction a cheap and easy way for understaffed Indiana nursing homes to get rid of patients who are too expensive, too troublesome or too likely to report problems to health inspectors.(2)

For more, see Nursing homes breaking the law (Residents' rights ignored in evictions; penalties are rare).

(1) Reportedly, a nursing home attempted to evict Jacob Householder, a brain-damaged teenager who needed round-the-clock care -- without ever finding a place to put him. The home did list another facility on Jacob's discharge notice, but it was a nursing home that already had said it would not take the teen. When the Householder family appealed to the state, Garden Villa denied that it had a duty to make sure Jacob had a place to go where he would be cared for, the story states. The state eventually ruled that the discharge was unsound, but only after the teen's mother, Angela Householder, fought through nearly a year of appeals hearings, during which she -- unable to afford a lawyer -- devoted several hours a day to learning the law. The issue was finally resolved when the home changed administrators, and Jacob was allowed to stay. The home was never cited, according to the story.

(2) According to the story, some states already provide greater protections for residents, but advocates say Indiana homes can easily circumvent their legal obligation to receive approval from a resident's doctor when a home says it can't meet the resident's needs. Florida, however, requires the doctor to actually sign the discharge notice, and Michigan requires nursing homes to give residents counseling before an eviction and provides for the state to offer counseling afterward, the story states.