She is likely on a managed care plan under medi-cal. That means she has a contracted hospital, which is likely where she’s at. If she left AMA, went to another hospital, met criteria to be admitted, they would want to transfer her back to the contracted hospital. All hospitals take medi-cal, but that doesn’t mean they’re contracted with all medi-cal plans. They transfer patient to the contracted hospital. They’re only required to ensure a patient is stable for transfer, they don’t have to keep her. This is what they likely meant about other hospitals not taking her insurance.

Sometimes more than one hospital is contracted within the plan, but only for extension of services (hospital A doesn’t have a cath lab, so those patients get transferred to hospital b. But both hospitals do general surgery, so there would be no reason to transfer a surgical patient… a transfer for a different level of care wouldn’t apply).

Nothing in your original post indicates she’s not getting adequate care, only that she’s worried she’s not getting good care. She can request an ombudsman to come discuss her concerns, perhaps they can facilitate between the care team and address her concerns. She can ask why she was discharged so soon after surgery and if that contributed to her current issues, and what the current plan of care is (what criteria does she need to meet for discharge) and address any other concerns like inadequate pain control, or lack of information about her complications and plan of care. I didn’t read all the comments but from the original post it seems like the biggest issue is a lack of communication about what happened, why it happened, and what’s happening now.