Homeless Dumping

Homeless Dumping has been a problem for some time in Los Angeles, with more than a dozen area hospitals, including L.A. Metropolitan Medical Center, Kaiser Permanente, and Hollywood Presbyterian, having been accused of dumping homeless outpatients on L.A.'s Skid Row. Now Hollywood Presbyterian is in hot water for a second time, after having "dropped off a homeless paraplegic man on Skid Row and left him crawling in the street with nothing more than a soiled gown and a broken colostomy bag."

Witnesses who said they saw the incident Thursday wrote down a phone number on the van and took down its license-plate number, which helped detectives connect the vehicle to Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center, the Los Angeles Times reported Friday.

…"I can't think of anything colder than that," said Detective Russ Long. "There was no mission around, no services. It's the worst area of Skid Row."

I can't really think of anything colder than that, either—except, perhaps, when the same thing happens in, say, Chicago in the dead of winter.

The saddest part about this apparent habitual mistreatment of the homeless is, as the hospitals have often quite correctly pointed out in their own defense, that Skid Row (in L.A. and Seattle, and "skid row" in other cities) is often the only place where appropriate treatment and care centers can be found for people with no insurance, no income, not even a fixed address. It's always "last call" at major hospitals for the homeless—you don't have to go back on the street, but you can't stay here. One of just many reasons we need healthcare reform, of course.

All that said, why on earth a healthcare provider, who ostensibly is interested in doing no harm, would not make the modicum of extra effort to connect a patient in such physical dire straits directly with a suitable provider on Skid Row, as opposed to leaving him "crawling in the street with nothing more than a soiled gown and a broken colostomy bag," is beyond me. That's just unconscionable.