Under law, there are only six reasons in which a nursing home can evict a resident. They are: if the resident is well enough to go home; need care only available elsewhere; endanger the health of others; endanger the safety of others; fail to pay their bills; or if a facility closes its doors. However, officials are reporting a rising trend in nursing home patients being evicted for none of these reasons.
According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, nursing homes are regularly forcing out frail and ill residents. According to state officials, facilities often go too far, seeking to evict those who are merely inconvenient or too costly. Moreover, residents with dementia or demanding families are among the most vulnerable.
Even though eviction counts are not formally recorded, complaints about nursing-home discharge practices have doubled over a decade, to 8,500 nationally in 2006, making it the second-biggest category tracked by the federal Administration on Aging, trailing only complaints about unanswered calls for assistance. “Across the board, involuntary discharge numbers have risen in recent years,” says Louise Ryan, Washington state’s long-term-care ombudsman, or official resident advocate. “It’s a real problem.”
For example, a recent review of admission agreements at Missouri nursing homes by the National Senior Citizens Law Center found that nearly one in five nursing homes granted itself the right to evict residents without cause. Almost half of the agreements authorized eviction for residents who become “uncooperative and unmanageable,” “unduly noisy,” “objectionably untidy” or for other reasons not permitted under federal law.