Kevin Lindamood, president and CEO of Health Care for the Homeless, said he doesn't think hospital dumping is widespread in Baltimore and that hospitals have gotten better at connecting the homeless with services and community groups. But it is hard to know how much because we don't have the data." "This incident is very visual because it happened on camera," Breidenstine said. It is unclear how prevalent hospital dumping is in Baltimore or across the country because it is not tracked by federal or state officials. Two other officers watched as she fell onto the sidewalk. A video of the incident showed a male officer pushing the barefoot woman to a bus stop. In May 2017, two Howard University police officers and their supervisor were fired in May after being recorded dumping a patient from a wheelchair outside the university's hospital in Washington, according to reports in The Washington Post. The hospital paid $1 million to settle that case. In 2007, a paraplegic man was found crawling around Skid Row and Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center was accused of taking him there without a wheelchair. Good Samaritan Hospital had to pay $450,000 to settle allegations that it dumped a homeless patient on the street in 2014 after he was treated for a foot injury. The city has imposed millions of dollars in fines on hospitals for the practice.
The city of Los Angeles began a crackdown on hospital dumping about a decade ago after several incidents there, particularly along Skid Row, where many of the city's homeless people live. But the discharge policies can differ by hospital and the practice of hospital dumping persists. The Joint Commission, which accredits hospitals, also requires that hospitals have a discharge plan. Hospitals must transfer patients they can't stabilize. The 1986 Emergency Medical Treatment & Labor Act forbids emergency rooms to deny hospital services if patients can't pay. The New York Times first began writing about the issues in the 1870s, when private hospitals were sending patients to the city's public hospital, according to a 2011 report in the American Journal of Public Health.
The issue of people being put out of hospitals is a nationwide problem. "Something was clearly going on," said Adrienne Breidenstine of Behavioral Health System Baltimore, which oversees substance use and mental health treatment in the city. Suntha declined to give details about the patient, citing privacy laws.
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