It would be cheaper to take these patients and send them to the Ritz Carlton, said Harvard Universit

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 used travel trailer Memorial used travel trailer Hospital used travel trailer 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 .
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.
An NBC News investigation discovered that cases like Latasiewicz s are not unusual, used travel trailer but the result of current health care policies and guidelines. They are known as permanent used travel trailer 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 used travel trailer attention even if they have no way to pay. Nursing used travel trailer and rehab facilities are not required used travel trailer 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 used travel trailer Ashish Jha. They could get room service used travel trailer all day, and that would be cheaper.
used travel trailer Jha estimates there are tens of thousands used travel trailer 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 used travel trailer 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 used travel trailer sometimes for months to qualify for Medicaid. Once they re approved, Medicaid will cover the nursing or rehab facility they need.
According to data from the National Inpatient Sample database at the Agency for Healthcare used travel trailer 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.
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 used travel trailer part-time at a local discount store, had no health insurance and no way to pay for his rehab.
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 used travel trailer Medical Center in Brooklyn, N.Y., for more than two years. Khydarova arrived there after suffering used travel trailer 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.
To mitigate used travel trailer the cost of these patients, used travel trailer 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.
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.