Hospital patients are dumped at homeless shelter

Haven for Hope had just opened its men's dorm in April when the first discharged patient showed up.


It was evening at the homeless center and Haven CEO George Block was walking along the sidewalk when he spied a woman getting out of a taxi. She was in a hospital gown and pushing an IV pole, with the intravenous line still attached to her.


“I asked the taxi driver what he was doing,” Block recalled. “He said he had a note saying to drop the woman off at this address. The women's dorms weren't even open yet, so we had no place to put her. We sent her back to the hospital.”


Since then, the practice of “medical dumping” — in which hospitals try to transfer their still-sick homeless patients to homeless shelters or other hospitals — has increased at Haven, officials allege.

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