By Kate Snow, Janet Klein and Dustin Stephens
Rock Center
For Barbara Latasiewicz, home was a hospital room. The Poland native, who had cleaned homes in the Chicago area for 20 years, suffered a stroke while on the job in September 2009. An ambulance took her to Adventist La Grange Memorial Hospital in Illinois.
"I was thinking that after a few days, that I'm just gonna get better," Latasiewicz told NBC’s Kate Snow through a translator in an interview airing April 25 at 9pm/8 c on Rock Center with Brian Williams.
Latasiewicz suffered paralysis on one side of her body, but eventually became well enough to leave the hospital. However, more than two years later, the 62-year-old was still in the hospital.
“She hasn’t needed to be in this acute facility for a long time,” said Richard Carroll, the hospital’s chief medical officer.
When asked about Latasiewicz’s more than two year stay at the hospital he oversees, Carroll said, “That’s really a function of how our health care system is working right now, which is it’s not working very well at all, particularly in cases like this.”
Carroll said that Latasiewicz belonged in a skilled nursing facility where she would receive a more appropriate rehabilitation, but she had no way to pay. Latasiewicz had no insurance and was an undocumented resident with no access to government safety-net programs like Medicaid. Without payment, no facility would take her.
NBC News
Barbara Latasiewicz
The end result? Latasiewicz stayed at La Grange. Her care cost the hospital $1.4 million. A skilled nursing facility would have been a fraction of the cost.
An NBC News investigation discovered that cases like Latasiewicz’s are not unusual, but the result of current health care policies and guidelines. They are known as “permanent patients” and are hidden in plain sight in hospital rooms across the country. That’s because under federal law, hospitals must treat any patient who needs emergency medical attention even if they have no way to pay. Nursing and rehab facilities are not required by law to do so. At the same time, hospitals cannot discharge a patient without a plan in place for his or her ongoing care. The result is patients stuck in the hospital in need of long-term care but with nowhere to go, large medical bills, and no way to pay – a cost that is usually covered at the hospital’s expense.
“It would be cheaper to take these patients and send them to the Ritz Carlton,” said Harvard University School of Public Health Professor Ashish Jha. “They could get room service all day, and that would be cheaper.”
Jha estimates there are tens of thousands of these patients stuck in the hospital with no clear place to go. Some stay an extra week, some months, and some like Latasiewicz even years. NBC News spoke with officials at dozens of hospitals across the country who confirmed housing patients who didn’t need to be there for extended periods.
Many patients are stuck because they have no money or insurance to pay for long-term care. Other patients may have insurance, but their medical needs are too complex for most skilled nursing facilities to accept. Then there are those in limbo at the hospital waiting sometimes for months to qualify for Medicaid. Once they’re approved, Medicaid will cover the nursing or rehab facility they need.
A spokesperson for the American Health Care Association which represents skilled nursing facilities says that the industry works with hospitals to find facilities for such hard-to-place patients.
According to data from the National Inpatient Sample database at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the problem of permanent patients appears to be on the rise. From 2005 to 2009, the last years for which data was available, uninsured hospital patients with no access to Medicare or Medicaid in need of long term care increased 20 percent.
NBC News
Garrick Amato
“Most of them are Americans,” Jha said. “And if they get hit by a bus, they get sick, they’re in this situation.”
Garrick Amato, 59, arrived at Banner Heart Hospital in Mesa, Ariz., after suffering a heart attack. A few days later, he was ready to leave the hospital for a rehab facility. However, Amato, who said he worked part-time at a local discount store, had no health insurance and no way to pay for his rehab.
“I guess no nursing home will take me cause I don’t have insurance,” Amato said.
Furthermore, as a single adult without dependent children, he did not qualify for Medicaid in Arizona. Amato spent most of March and much of April at the hospital. Banner Hospital eventually found charity care for him that placed him in a skilled nursing facility where he belonged.
Other patients linger in hospitals despite their best efforts to find charity care. Fatima Khydarova, a professor from Uzbekistan, has been at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, N.Y., for more than two years. Khydarova arrived there after suffering an incapacitating stroke while visiting her grandchildren in New York. While Khydarova will never walk or talk again, doctors say she does not need to be in a hospital.
NBC News
Fatima Khydarova
“In a perfect world she should be either at home with her family caring for her or in a nursing home,” Maimonides CEO and President Pamela Brier said.
Khydarova’s grandchildren said that they cannot take care of their grandmother at their mother’s small apartment and at the same time make a living to support all of them.
“I’m working, I’m working.” said granddaughter Nigina Abdullaeva who works at a doctor’s office.
Dr. Jha of Harvard University says that the costs for treating permanent patients are passed on to other consumers through higher medical bills and insurance premiums.
“The bottom line is we’re all paying for it,” Jha said.
To mitigate the cost of these patients, some hospitals have paid out of their own funds to move them to skilled nursing facilities. Once there, the hospital could pay for their care for the rest of their lives.
“Hospitals don't want to widely advertise that they will pay for your care elsewhere,” Jha said. “But in select situations, they look, and they realize, instead of spending tens of thousands of dollars to keep the patient in the hospital, it's probably cheaper for them to send them somewhere else.”
Back in Illinois, case workers at La Grange Hospital also struggled for years to find a more appropriate medical facility for Latasiewicz. They eventually found one, but it was in her native Poland.
Wiping tears away from her eyes, Latasiewicz told Kate Snow through a translator that she did not want to leave. Latasiewicz lived in the United States for 20 years and has a son and grandchildren living nearby. However, her son, Peter Latasiewicz, said he could not take his mother into the small apartment he shares with his children and another family.
“I wouldn’t be able to provide as much help and support and care for her,” Peter Latasiewicz said, “she’s got a lot of medical conditions where she requires 24/7 care.”
The hospital eventually went to court for permission to send Barbara to the medical facility in Poland.
The hospital won and on March 1, Latasiewicz boarded a flight back to her native Poland.
In Brooklyn, Khydarova, the professor from Uzbekistan, remains at Maimonides and the hospital is still working hard to find a solution for her family
“She’s going to stay in the hospital unless we can find a spot for her,” CEO Brier said, “She could stay here potentially for the rest of her life.”
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In light of this story, that "individual mandate" does sound so bad does it..
Everybody should pay for their own health insurance and the insurance companies should pay for services instead of padding the CEO's pockets....
Remember the quise of this was to lower the price of healthcare. It will be more expensive. I am for healthcare reform but not how it was shoved down our throats without READING THE DAMN BILL!
People live a long time now. Geriatric care in particular runs for extended periods of time now as modern medicine keeps people alive past their natural point of expiration.
How about everyone stop wasting their breath on gov't money being spent to help civilians (citizens or not) with their medical needs, and focus on the TRILLIONS of dollars that have been wasted to help this country sink deeper into sh*t river that it had already been. This is a prime example of the media veering your attention away from the much bigger issue at hand. The money being "wasted" in hospitals to help pregnant women deliver in a clean and safe environment is only a FRACTION of the money this country spends on countless other things. Let's try and keep our eye on the ball people!!
Signed into law back in 1986 by Ronnie Republican. That law worked out REAL well. :P
On the other hand, there are those of us WITH insurance who get booted from the hospital 6 hours after an appendectomy and have to have additional surgery to repair the damage from a torn incision because we were discharged too soon.
Don't blame the hospital. You can thank your insurance company. They most likely would only approve it as a day surgery procedure. The US has the shortest hospitals stays in the industrialized world.
Nice story. You can, of course, cite a source without use of a bong.
I blame the moochers like in the story above of why I get booted out. I have insurance and pay for it. while someone gets to live in the hospital for 2 years without paying dime.. get real.
Dennis
You weren't thrown out because of the "moochers", you were thrown out to maximize profit. Your insurance company doesn't make money by paying for your health care, only by not paying for it.
I feel your pain. Once last year, I had surgery, got woke up, and left. Once home I rolled around in pain for hours. Finally, decided if I could move that much, I might as well go back to work, so I drove 2 hours one way, walked the 1/2 mile from the parking lot to the hanger just to be told I would be working in another hanger that day. So I trekked another 1/2 mile with my lunch cooler and got to work. After a short time the pain subsided; but for a time it was worse than childbirth contractions. Women used to stay in hospital for 3 days after childbirth too, but now you are in for 24 hours and not a minute more. Good thing women are tougher here...just sayin'. ;)
Los Angeles would just dump poor people on the street after a hospital visit because they couldn't pay . . . that is until a reporter ran a feature story on the whole sordid mess . . . imagine that, a hospital putting you in a cab while you're still in your hospital gown no less, driving you into downtown Los Angeles and putting you out on a sidewalk on Skid Row . . . now that's affordable health care, eh?
What's the world coming to when, as human beings, we do this to our fellow man strictly because they have no money . . . money truly IS the root of all evil, and what these hospitals are doing is pure evil. They worship the almighty dollar just like any other corporation.
So, where do you propose we come up with the money to fix this problem? Our nation is sinking in debt because of entitlements. This woman in a illegal alien - send her back to her country for her own medical needs.
PTByrd, what is the world coming to? It's not coming or progressing anywhere, it has been like this for millenia. Out expectations have changed while reality has not. Time to stop deluding ourselves in to believing things are going to get better any time soon.
There is plenty of money to fix most of what is wrong with America today and NO, it doesn't require raising taxes or the debt ceiling. Look under the Issues section of my website on the 2012 Presidential Candidates site and you'll see there are plenty of ways to get money to cover everything from healthcare to missile defense. Just takes some elimination and re-location. You'll see what I mean when you go there.
That's OK, soon the gov't will be ready for what they will do with the long-term ill and the elderly. They are building the Soylent Green factories even now.
Who pays for it though? Or do we just turn them out to their own death?
Looks like their immediate fam9ilies already did that. Sad
Not like I think it was 100 years ago when family took them in, although people didn't live as long anyway.
Of course not. ObamaCare will make sure they have a nice place to die that is easy to hose out.
this law doesn't have anything to do with obamacare, does it?
Jerry B,
Worse, the CDC ordered one of their workers to secure areas around the country for temporary morgues. In Madison, Ga. there were over 200,000 black plastic coffins with flat reinforced lids so they could be stacked on top of each other. The worker was given 3 years to get the assignment done.
Why does the CDC think we will have over 400,000,000 dead in America soon? (This number comes from figures someone submitted that I HAVE NOT yet checked out; but is based on the temporary morgues holding 500,000 dead at one time with 800 sites.)
Do they have information that we don't? A coming pandemic? And why is our government conducting urban warfare drills in United States cities? Why are police departments getting extra instruction on roadblocks? And tactics to enter peoples' homes by means other than the front door?
And is there really such a thing as FEMA concentration camps? Are our soldiers being trained to shoot down American citizens? Will they follow through with such an order? What if the order is just to fill those plastic bins?
I hear conspiracy theories on the Internet all the time and mostly I don't pay attention, but when these things actually start happening, I tend to take notice. The black coffins are 7 feet long and 3 feet deep and have been seen stored in remote locations close to airports and railroads. Anyone else seen them? In the movie Soylent Green, people chose to go there and view beautiful scenary with soothing music as they died peacefully. Then they were turned into Soylent Green patties that everyone else had to eat. The theories I hear doesn't look so peaceful.
If this is the government's plan...when everyone is dead who exactly do they GOVERN? For this reason alone, I think the theory doesn't hold water; but they are doing some really weird things nonetheless.
Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) passed in 1986 under the Reagan administration-did not seem to be a very liberal administration to me.
This was to provide emergency treatment, not provide free nursing homes.
Yes, but it started in the emergency room.
Health care is a business. Big business. Doctors and nurses train for many years to qualify in their profession and it isn't solely to help mankind. They've got to earn a living as well. Hospitals can only function if bills are paid. That's where we come in. Soylent Green?
And we wonder why healthcare is so expensive... maybe there is a regulation in Obamacare to care for them. Either way we end up paying for it. Either our own insurance premiums go up or an aspirin costs $100 in the hospital. Bring back Soylent Green!
Dr. to patient: You need long term care.
Patient to Dr.: I have no money and no insurance.
Dr. to patient: Better get yourself to the emergency room.
Now that explains why a single Tylenol pill in a hospital costs more than an entire bottle from Walgreens!
It costs more because you aren't just paying for the single Tylenol. You are paying for the Pharmacist & the Pharmacy tech who make sure you get the right dosage of the right drug. It pays for the equipment they use. It pays for the space the pharmacy is in. It pays for electric, heat, water, and gas. It pays for insurance. It pays for the nurse who gets the pill out of the machine. It pays for the time for order entry and many other things.
paying for tylenol at the local pharmacy doesn't pay for heat, electricity, space, employees, equipment?
only hospitals have the privilege of charging for these factors?
Who do you think pays for universal healthcare? Our premiums will rise because the feds aren't going to cut any budgets to pay for it. So, the result is everyone has healthcare until the people paying for it go bankrupt. Also, there will be rationing at some point which means the people that pay for it won't get the services that they were paying for.
Interesting view...considering we pay twice as much per capita compared to any nation that has adopted universal healthcare. People in those countries (i.e. Canada, France, etc) have not gone bankrupt and according to the World Health Organization receive the same quality of care for half the price.
Vipp - They haven't seen how the Federal bureaucracy can screw things up.
Well Americans wont have health care to worry about and who gets help. The Ryan Plan says if you can't afford health care that's your problem. A lady asked Rick Santorum about the need and expense of her special needs child. He said your on your own. Mitt has made it clear when he's President he will end health care and medicaid. Many have commented about immigrants who have lived and worked in the USA for more then 20 years but should not be allowed the health care. Americans who travel overseas and need health care are treated for free. Many Americans like Sarah Palin use Canada's free health care system. As US health care fraud by even elected Governors is taking 2/3's of the federal funding for profit, wealthy Americas get their needs for free by traveling out of the USA. We pay for the health care in full for Dick Cheney. Cheney had his first heart attack in 1978 at age 37 years old while working as a White House Chief of Staff with full paid medical benefits. Well Cheney has been billing the US taxpayer ever since and even jumped the line at 70 years old and got a heart transplant that was for a younger person. Americans watch every day a Law Maker approves a foreign citizen come to the US for medical needs and then leaves or stays if the medical problem is continued. American children are denied but many foreign children are brought here and cared for. Rick and Karen Santorum make sure their special needs child gets the best medical care as Rick is a Lobbyist for the Health Insurance companies to make sure premiums can continue to go up. Sarah Palin knows her family is cared for by Canada and do others who are fighting the Bill. Just think so many countries have free health care for their citizens but the Richest Country in the World allows it's citizens to die.
There is no such thing as free, my friend, not in this country or any other. They pay through the nose in taxes so that equal access is provided.
Why shouldn't parents pay for their special needs child? They volunteered to have the child in the first place and there is no guaranteed that any specific pregnancy will result in a healthy child. Why should I, a taxpayer and insurance payer, end up responsible for someone else's voluntary decision?
Point to consider, the Canadians have to ration care so their own citizens, faced with being denied services because they are not "worth the trouble" end up going to foreign countries, mainly the U.S., to pay for the healthcare they want. Canadians allow their citizens to die, too, as do the French, Greeks, Italians, etc.
Neal,
I would much rather have a healthcare system that gives "some to all" rather than "none to many".
Why doesn;t the hospital make a deal with a long term care facility to pay her time there? It would be cheaper and she would be getting the appropriate level of care.
She's an illegal alien. Send her back to her homeland and she can get medical there.
Under socialism we will be able to take care of everybody ! Unfortuneately we will be paying more to do it. That is those that can pay.
If Socialism comes to this country completely (as the Progressives desire), average dailty health will decline, average lifespan will decline, Pharmaceutical companies will stop their research into new drugs and quietly go out of business, and on, and on, and on. When it is easier to sponge off someone else that to provide for oneself, civilization ends.
Where have you been hiding? Pharmaceutical Companies are not making drugs needed in America now because of their uncontrollable GREED.... if they can't make billions they aren't interested in making the drug, even if the drug is prov en to save lives or just treats a known curable condition, if the Drug Pushing Companies can't make billions on a drug they aren't making the drug. the insurance companies are driving health care in this country into the same Ditch George Bush used.......Drug Pushing Companies who have contracts with Insurance companies to supply prescription drugs that THEY MAKE and then charge unreal prices for the drugs they make and supply......can you spell organized crime?
I don't believe it! Yes they treat you and send you home to die, unless you can not move at all ..., if you can talk, open your eyes and walk, you are sent home from hospital, no matter what your condition AND you will get a bill and they will keep after you to pay that bill AND it will affect your credit if you don't pay, shame on you for lying like this, shame on you!
What we need is to remove the age requirement for Medicare. That way, all americans will be covered but the Republicans are protecting the interests of the Hospitals and other facilities in the healthcare industry so they are against Medicare for all ... Hallelujah
Medicare for all? Watch your take home pay shrink, big time! Someone has to pay for it all.
Its funny how this story focused on illegals and foreignesr. What happens to the Americans in the same situation?
Healthcare ought to be a right and it ought to be added to our rights in our constitution. Call it what you will, whether it's Obamacare or Romneycare or anything else. This is the ONLY civilized country in the entire world that does not provide healthcare for it's citizens and/or it's visitors. It's high time for the USA to get on board with the rest of the world. There is not ONE of you out there that isn't one heart attack, one cancer, one serious accident away from being UNinsurable, UNinsured and then you become what you criticize here. Go ahead become disabled due to poor health and watch most health insurance companies kick you to the curb unless you have a pile of money to afford exorbitant rates. I say tax all Americans, just like Medicare or SS taxes and provide insurance and healthcare uniformly to every single American regardless of their socioeconomic status. I know, I'm a damned liberal, that's okay, I like it like that. One thing is certain, all of you Christian conservatives out there, just remember, Jesus himself told us to care for each other, especially "the least of these."
Health care is not a right. What in the world will you do when insurance goes away and you, and you alone, pay for YOUR own health care needs?
No one owes anyone else health care unless they voluntarily want to pay for it.
I already pay into medicare/medicaid. Its come out of my paycheck every payday. When you can contol the spending, like what rats like to hear on cocaine and such then I am open to your suggestion. Why aren't you bashing your liberal buddies for wasting trillions of dollars on BS instead of healthcare. I am not paying anymore taxes. I already pay enough. When you control Washingtons spending look me up.
Aren't the unalienable rights: LIFE, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?
Karen,
"Healthcare is not a right"...so it's a privilege?
Healthcare should most certainly be a right. Is education a right? Should we have a right to have clean drinking water? Should it be our right that we have disinfected food?
The "let them die" lunatics are out today!
Karen: is police protection a right or a privalege? Military, food inspections, education, air travel safety, the list goes on and on... What is so mytifying about the right wing is that they expect the services and safety they want but would deny the same or other service to those around.
LIfe does not mean healthcare. Life means you are able to do what you want with your life without intereference. It doesn't mention healthcare at all.
Why do you have the right to force others to tend to your rotting carcass?
Do you drink alcohol? Smoke? Eat processed foods? Then you aren't taking care of yourself. Responsibility for your health lies with you. Don't expect someone else to take of you. If thats so why isn't someone helping ME with my bills, my mortgage, my student loans, my kids education. I am the one responisble for them, not someone else's money. Be responsible and accountable for your life and actions before you start demanding money from others.
Did the constitution mention this Mr. "i pay half the world's taxes" Dennis? By definition life is: the condition that distinguishes organisms from inorganic objects and dead organism. I would think health care would play a role in this RIGHT! Please elaborate where you get your facts from.
Dennis, why do you want someone to help you so much financially when you obviously make more money than Romney, if you are paying half of the taxes received by our federal government.
Thanks UC I think you make a great point. Healthcare should be an entitlement for all Americans and affordable. It should not be that only the rich and politicians have access to great healthcare. We all deserve to live a full and healthy life. Why should we have to worry about going to the hospital with illness or an injury and having to file for bankruptcy? Even those who have insurance sometimes can't afford the co-pays and coinsurance. God forbide you get diagnosed with something, lose your job or have to transfer jobs and now you have a "pre exisisting condition" and you're no longer covered.
I am one of those people that is uninsured. I have a full time job making 35k a year and I pay taxes. I'm still fairly young (26) but my employer does not offer any type of benefits. I have tried to find healthcare outside of work and it is a joke and way too expensive. My husband and I live paycheck to paycheck.
I only hope that someday things are different and that everyone has equal access to AFFORDABLE health insurance. No one is asking for it to be "free" but the costs of obtaining insurance needs to change.
split the country in half. right wingers get one side, normal humans get the other. win win.
I am for that but you don't get any of my money. Fend for yourself.
With the money us "right wingers" save on your healthcare we can build adequate defenses when you come to take out wealth, when you are bankrupt.
I already have adequate defenses.. a brain that thinks..
The Ron Paul / Tea Party answer would be "Let her die!"
Unfortuneately Obamacare already has that covered. Its called the care council that will decide what to do..a board of bean counters tell you what you are entitled to in healthcare.
UNfortunately the death panels that the wing nuts blame on Obama are already in place. They are called insurance companies. They are figthting ObamaCare so violently because the affordable care act cuts into their profit and actually makes them insure people.
In other words a death panel.
Have any of you read Obamacare bill? When you do come back and make a real informed statement.
Wonder where the cost for 20 million of Obamas illegals is going to be passed on to with ObamaCare?
You are on the right track. What we need is Universal Health Care like every other first world nation. Thanks for the endorsement!
Whats this first world crap. Don't you know we are striving for a one world government so you get to take care of Haitians and the poor Polish woman in the article. The UN has mandated it and every president since Carter has been pushing for it. Reagan, Bushes, Clinton and now Obama.
Socialize health care/medicine! Unfortunately it will never happen here because there is too much profit to be made by screwing over sick people and for some odd reason politicians only pass things that make profit for those who buy their elections!
Exactly.
Just as long as everyone gets to pay for it and not just a select few. I am tired of carrying half the country with my taxes.
Dennis you must be filthy rich and have no common sense to hire a CPA, if half of federal taxes come out of your pocket. However, if we had socialized health care, everyone would pay less on health expenses. Taxes would obviously go up, but health care costs overall would drop drastically. Everyone would be accounted for, so as to not have the uninsured show up and then stick everyone else w/ their huge bills.
As long as the illegals don't get any as they are not paying into the system.