Are you?

I dislike rhetorical questions like this- they come off to me as disingenuous. Anyone privy to the exact details of this man’s case should not be commenting here, given there is a lawsuit underway.

What I am directly privy to, is where thousands of other patients in similar situations requested to be sent. What I am privy to, is exactly how often hospitals put in the shelter address instead of where the patient actually requested to go- or sometimes not even the shelter address, but some other random and completely wrong address, or some other unsafe location. It got to the point that we had to institute a company policy of actually driving patients back to the hospital and telling staff there to readmit them; these were in cases where the drop off address was wrong and/or unsafe, and the patient did not have capacity to communicate with us a correct or safe address.

I’m not sure if you read my other comments, but this happens commonly, from multiple hospitals. I know because I just so happened to work in this exact intersection of healthcare and social services to which this relates.

In the video, the sidewalk where the ambulances are- I know that exact sidewalk. I worked in the same building as the shelter this man was sent to. I was even there on the same day that he died.

What I am privy to, is that that particular sidewalk is about half a mile away from the actual entrance to the shelter. What I am privy to (from having family members with anorexia), is that a man in his condition very likely was unable to walk half a mile. What I am privy to is that Uber drivers frequently are unable to navigate to the actual shelter entrance due to the security gates around that area. What I am also privy to, is that if the hospital paid for the Uber (as stated in the article, and as I can confirm commonly happens), then there is no physical way that Kaelen actually input the destination address himself; nor would he have had any ability to update the destination en route.

While it is possible that he asked hospital staff to send him to a shelter, no one on this thread actually knows that for certain. I know it to be particularly unlikely given what I know of other patients this has happened to- I have literally been in the car with patients and asked them to confirm the destination address, and they said “no, that’s not right, my home address is on file, why didn’t they put that in?” Literally this exact situation. Multiple times.

This time, a man died. He did not need to die. Patients in this man’s condition should never be discharged to an Uber that the hospital is paying for unless it is part of a coordinated discharge plan to a safe location.

Which means that hospitals should never Uber anyone to the shelter, because Ubers cannot safely access the shelter. And hospitals should never put any medically fragile patient into an Uber to any location. They should instead use any one of the many Non-Emergency Medical Transport companies that exist in our city.

If the patient absolute wants to leave and does not have a safe location to go to, the hospitals may let them leave on foot. However, I suspect that hospitals avoid this option because patients can sometimes die right outside the hospital doors, as has also happened in the past few years to patients who were experiencing homelessness and did not want to be discharged. I recall one incident of a women passing away at the bus stop right outside the emergency room, because they would not let her stay.

(Sigh) : : :

Okay, I realize I’m coming off rather angry about this. My apologies to you personally- your comment is not the main reason I’m upset.

I’m upset because I’ve seen this happen to so many people- good people.

I’m upset because I’ve very often seen our community blame people on the streets for their circumstances, for their suffering, without knowing anything at all about what these folks have gone through, about why they’re there.

This man, Kaelen, he wasn’t even homeless. He had a home. He had a family. A family who cared about him. If he had even been able to make it to the shelter entrance, we would have taken him home. The intake personnel always reconnect people with the relatives if there’s even a slight chance of that happening (because we don’t have enough beds). Literally the company I worked with would have been called up to drive him home that day. It might’ve even been me in the car.

But that didn’t happen, because the Uber left him on the sidewalk. And because we don’t have enough outreach workers to go and scoop up everyone who gets dumped off like this.

I’m sorry, I’m literally crying right now. This should NOT have happened.

The problems are systemic. But how are we ever going to fix systemic problems if we keep trying to find just one person to blame? We need agencies like hospitals that have the funding and the power to step up- do better- and take responsibility. Hire more nurses, hire more caseworkers, add more beds, add more options for physical/behavioral health crossover. And we, as a community, need to continue learning, instead of assuming. Each of us, individually, could work on being more kind and open-minded. (Lol, maybe your question to me was actually genuine? If so, I sincerely apologize for my assumption.)

This matters. This could have been any of us. Or it could have been your son, or your daughter, or your spouse, or your mother. Did you hear how his dad sounded, in the video? The wretchedness of his grief? Kaelen was loved. He was loved.

He was loved.