Paraplegic man dumped in Los Angeles gutter sues hospital

Paraplegic man dumped in Los Angeles gutter sues hospital

www.reuters.com

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A mentally ill paraplegic man filed a lawsuit on Thursday against a hospital that dumped him in a gutter on Los Angeles' "Skid Row" -- a case that highlighted the plight of the city's vast homeless population.

Gabino Olvera, 42, sued the Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center for negligence and elder abuse after it discharged him in February 2007, took him across town in a van and left him in a soiled hospital gown without a wheelchair in the heart of the city's homeless area.

Witnesses who came to Olvera's aid said they saw him dragging himself on the ground with hospital papers and documents clenched in his teeth while the driver sat in her van and applied makeup before driving off.

(visit the link for the full news article)

Yikes...Remind me again why I don't like driving into L.A.? Seriously, why didn't the hospital at least give the guy a clean gown upon discharge? I know they're not supposed to be a taxi service, but this could get real ugly IMHO.

www.reuters.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

reply to post by DimensionalDetective


.... All I can say is I hope every executive at the hospital is fired, and the poor fellow gets a few million dollars. Mentally retarded or not, no one should be treated like that...

They have been doing the treat and dump on skid row now for a decade.
Old news really. Sick state of our healthcare/socio system.

reply to post by jpm1602


yes. it's sickening isn't it.

i hope this guy gets em for a mint...presbo church...noice

This is typical conduct in large cities. The shelters are ful,l especially in the winter months, and when the people are discharged from the hospital and are homeless and have no place to go, they go back to the street. In a way, there are no other choices. No one will take them, and so they live on the street anyway, so it is just a matter of what street to dump them on. Great nation, eh?

1 in 4 of them are veterans and cannot handle what they have been thru, and the homeless literally have no place to call home, and so the hospitals just take them ' home ' to the streets. Sad, in a nation with all these billionaires...and trillions wasted on the Pentagon not accounted for. just think, for the missing 2.3 trillion dollars missing from Zakheims reign there, we could house and counsel and feed every homeless person in the nation, and have money left over.

Did this thread on the case back then.
L.A. Hospital Drops Paraplegic Patient on Skid Row   1 2 3 ..4

www.latimes.com

LAPD Officers Eric de la Cruz and Pernell Taylor said they arrived to find the man being carried out of the street on a chair that had been retrieved from the nearby park offices. De la Cruz later asked the victim if he had wanted to be dropped off at the location.

"He said he had nowhere else to go, and the hospital staff told him he could no longer stay there," De la Cruz said of the man, who is being treated at County-USC Medical Center.

The LAPD has accused several hospitals of dumping patients on skid row over the last two years, including Kaiser's West Los Angeles hospital, Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center and Los Angeles Metropolitan Medical Center.

Please visit the link provided for the complete story.

I'm speechless. Much have I heard, and some I know, about healthcare in America. Being aware how little social security in general there is, I have however never, never ever imagined it could be cruel like this. This being a medical institution doing it, I just can't find words to express my rage and feelings.

Is it really so, without health insurance you are literally left to die? With no mercy, no care, without charity. In the richest nation on the planet?

A nation that can afford to spend about 300 million dollars a day on a war running, if not endlessly then for decades to come, cannot take care of its weakest and disabled members. Who was it that said, "a society is judged by the way it takes care of its weakest members"?

I'm not gonna praise my Scandinavian background here, but this reality snippet can't help but make me feel that more gratefull for it.

I'm glad we got a face on the victim, that we now got a name, but the story doesn't tell how much the lawsuit is.

Hopefully enough for the lawyer to make a good slice.

[edit on 17/1/2008 by khunmoon]