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Thursday, February 17, 2005It's been more than a year since Sarah Nome was deemed healthy and given her discharge papers. Yet $1 million in unpaid medical bills later, she remains bed-bound in room 502 at Kaiser Permanente's San Rafael Medical Center, locked in a stalemate with the hospital north of San Francisco. Even the patient acknowledges she isn't sick: "The thing is, I have no medical problem. I've been here more than a year, never had any medication, never had any treatment, never had a fever, have a perfect heart, blood pressure is like a teenager. There is no reason that I should be occupying a hospital bed," Nome said. It's not that there aren't any nursing homes that she can't go to, there are just no nursing homes that she wants to go to: Admitted for a psychiatric evaluation in January 2004, Nome was discharged a week later. She and her daughter, Jane Sands, claim they can't find a suitable nursing care facility in Marin County, where Nome has spent her entire life. She refuses to live anywhere else. "It isn't that I'm not ready to go ... I just have nowhere to go," Nome said in a telephone interview from her. The hospital may not be able to throw her out in the street, but can't they throw her out into a nursing home, even if it isn't in Marin County? Or at least into her daughter's home? posted by Sydney on 2/17/2005 07:49:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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