📋 AARP Foundation Defends the Right of Older Americans (AARP Article)

[Spring2025]

FROM THE ARTICLE - SEE ARTICLE FOR MORE!!!

Battling for Justice on Your Behalf.

AARP Foundation litigation team defends the rights of older Americans.

By Elise Ceyral, AARP. Published November 14, 2024.

In 2017, Gloria Single, 82, who had dementia, was sent to the hospital by her nursing home staff after she threw utensils at residents in the dining room. Later, the California facility where she’d lived with her husband for five years refused to allow her back — an action called “patient dumping.”

That triggered a yearslong legal battle, in which AARP Foundation lawyers fought to uphold state and federal laws that prohibit what happened to Single. In 2021, a California court ruled her rights were violated, confirming a legal precedent that protects more than a million nursing home residents.

https://www.aarp.org/politics-society/advocacy/info-2024/aarp-foundation-battling-for-justice.html

[GailL1]

Just keep in mind that this was a facility classified as a nursing home.  It would be different if it was another type of residency (facility housing or living)  - say, an assisted living facility or even an independent living facility where they are unable to pay for their needed one-on-one care - daily living and/or medical.

The place where people with health needs, including memory and mental, live their lives has to be suitable for the care they need or if, allowed to bring in any appropriate caregivers.

Now sometimes Medicaid will pay for some care to allow some with health needs to remain in their homes instead of going into a nursing home.  But that would depend on the level of care they need and whether or not the type of paid staff that is utilized is equipped to handle this type of care.  

It could be that one could start out at home and then as their condition deteriorates they are then assigned a more comprehensive care facility.  

In the case mentioned, a nursing home facility still would be the most appropriate care giving facility -  although if I had been their family I would have tried to have them (husband & wife) move to another nursing home - but many times the problem is having the bed space - especially if trying to place the two together.  This is probably only going to get worse because of the number of people aging, their finances vs the number of nursing homes available with adequate staffing.