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Discussion

Granny Dumping

With the Memorial Holiday over it is now the official beginning of summer time vacation. Time for the family to hit the road, the skies or the boats. But what to do with Gramma? Lets take her to the ER. She hasn't appeared "quite right" lately. Heck she even peed on the couch last week. Im sure they can keep her in the hospital for a few weeks while we go on vacation!!!

Yes folks, this is quite common. I even had one pts darling daughter who overloaded granny on a salty bacon breakfast and skipped a few days of lasix so she could get nice and gurgly for us in the ER. Time to call social services, elder abuse.

Ever get one of these in your ER?

Featured Replies

Oh Lordy...we had severallllllll Granny/Pappy dumps this Memorial Day weekend...I can understand needing a break, but the hospital is a mighty expensive way to get one.You always know it's a 'dump' when you are admitting the pt, who arrives with all family members in tow..you go to check the admit orders and go back to ask the family questions/ask about meds, ect...and POOF...they're gone !!! lol

Most of our drops come from the local nursing homes. You can always tell when a Holiday weekend is coming up. The nursing homes run short staff on those days and they start sending their "labor intensive" pts to us. Sometimes as early as Thursday evening. But most of the time it starts around 1000hrs on the Friday of the holiday weekend, the phone calls from the homes saying they have to send Mr/Mrs Jones in because normally she is unresponive but today s/he more unresponsive than usual. Clear admit there. That way Mr/Mrs Jones is out of their hair for few days. Sad but true. When I was street medic we used to get what we called mom or pop drops all the time. I had one girl I worked with sum it niclely after taking a mom drop out of a private home. She said; "Hell, THanksgiving is this week and we gotta get grandma's bed outta the dining room so we can have Thanksgiving Dinner!" It's one of those statements that's horrifying and hysterical at the same time. Seeing this dumps year in/year out also made you despise humanity.

  • Guides

We almost always get several of these admissions just before a big holiday weekend.....all of a sudden somebody's Mom or Grandma suffers an episode of "weakness" (my all-time favorite wastebasket diagnosis :stone ) and family just can't take care of her at home anymore. Translation: We babysit a relatively healthy but confused/incontinent/combative/uncooperative elderly patient until Monday, when the discharge planners come in and they can begin the process of finding nursing-home placement.

This, of course, irritates the hell out of us because these patients are often very heavy care and high-maintenance (incontinent care, Q 2 hr turns, bed alarms, close obs etc.) but we're not doing anything for them medically.....it's just frustrating. Instead of checking out nursing homes themselves, or even getting Senior Services to do the legwork, these families just wait until Friday night and dump the patient in the ER.........and nobody ever does a thing about it. :angryfire

saw hundreds of those - turns acute hospital care into a holding unit for long term care placement.

after working a long weekend and having several "dumps" admitted - it was very easy to get bitter.

nursing home beds are very short here and getting a ltc admission would often mean we had them on the acute ward for months...

I had one girl I worked with sum it niclely after taking a mom drop out of a private home. She said; "Hell, THanksgiving is this week and we gotta get grandma's bed outta the dining room so we can have Thanksgiving Dinner!"

This is terrible!!!!! :crying2:

As someone said before, this is a "pop drop" or "Positive tail-light sign."

I do get concerned about some respite care sites though. We have one locally that advertises their "Respite Care" program at the beginning of the summer. What really scary about this place is that I've heard of a woman who was possibly molested by the staff. I've heard that GOOD respite care is hard to come by, and that there are waiting lists for respite care. However, this does not excuse those who want to use the hospital as a babysitting service come vacation time.

Don't these people know that they could be looking at their own fate in the eyes?

Whatever happened to "treat those as you wish to be treated"?

We get a variation of this in home health.......family brings us in for "a weekend" and disappears leaving gandma alone over the holidays. The kicker was a family who left grandma (resonably healthy, mobile and not incontinent) and took the DOG :angryfire I dont understand people.

Laura

The other variant we see all the time is grandparents or parents come to visit for the first time in a few years. And the first little complaint they have the family whisks them off to the ER and demonstrate overcompensted behaviour for ignoring their parents over the last few years.

My Mom just got here from Seattle, you need to check her over to make sure she is ok for us. We havent seen her in a few yrs but make sure she is around for us not to see again for a few more years.

Personally, my parents and grandparents are all dead, and when I get older I will never go visit my children, and if they come to visit Im going golfing.

Ohhh yeeeah! I remember those. Was always an increase in "Change in mental status" admits around the holidays. Work 'em up for r/o sepsis, TIA, MI, the whole nine yards. Always good for a long weekend. :rolleyes:

OMG that is horrible!!! I have had in home health people think Medicare with pay for 24 hour while people go on vacation.

Here are my thoughts on that................. :rotfl:

ren

  • Experts

A few years ago I worked for a SNF that was a "prefered provider" with our local hospital and took admits 24/7 including from the ER, the hospial even had "our" admit packets for the ER doc to write the admit orders and the ER Social Worker had been "trained" to complete out admission agreement with a family member.

The facility was HARD core. The "responsable" family member was required to show proof that the Medicaid application process had been initiated within 3 working days or the facility's legal rep initiated lein procedeings AND a phone call was made to APS. My state is pretty hard core and DSHS [/i]WILL reverse a transfer of property if it occurs within the 12 months prior to an application if there is even a hint of inpropriety. Also, the family member signing the admission agreement was signing that they personally would be responsable for payment of the bill if Granny has noassets or insurance.

Anyway...word gets around, "social admits" are not as common an occurance as it once was (I think the same families are repeat offenders) and generally if there is an admit it is warrented.

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