{"id":42239,"date":"2024-02-20T19:37:18","date_gmt":"2024-02-21T00:37:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=42239"},"modified":"2024-02-20T19:37:24","modified_gmt":"2024-02-21T00:37:24","slug":"hospital-patient-dumping-crisis-in-lakeland-continues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2024\/02\/20\/hospital-patient-dumping-crisis-in-lakeland-continues\/","title":{"rendered":"Hospital patient dumping crisis in Lakeland continues"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Hospital patient dumping\u00a0continues to be a crisis in\u00a0Polk County, and the newly obtained body-camera video shows another recent incident.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A Lakeland police officer responded to US 98 and George Jenkins Boulevard for a panhandling incident at around 1:30 p.m. on January 20. He stopped and talked with a man who asked him if he had done something wrong, to which the officer responds, “Yeah. Panhandling’s illegal.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The man responds that he didn’t know that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He explained to the officer that he came from St. Augustine, and he has only been in the city for about a week. He has also been homeless for a year.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

“Who brought you here?” the officer asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The people from Advent Health Deland brought me to the Lakeland hospital,” the man told the officer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The man said Lakeland Regional Health then discharged him and took him to a homeless shelter in the area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“So the hospital just threw you out the front door and didn’t offer you a ride back to Advent Deland?” the officer asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“No,” the man responded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“That’s pretty crappy of them, man,” the officer said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Talbot House Ministries, a homeless services provider in Lakeland, previously told the media that hospitals dumping patients on their doorstep has become a growing crisis, because they don’t have the medical capabilities to take care of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“They say they’ve called us but, we’ve never received a call. They tell them there’s going to be a bed waiting for them. They show up on our door,”<\/em> said Deborah Cozzetti, the director of programs for Talbot House Ministries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A vast majority of the time, the patients themselves don’t know where they’re going. In a statement, the senior vice president of administration at Lakeland Regional Health wrote:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“…Lakeland Regional Health is required to have a safe discharge plan for patients. We may discharge a patient to a shelter or other living facility if that\u2019s where the patient is\/has been residing. On a daily basis, we routinely coordinate and communicate directly with local agencies prior to discharging patients from our facility to ensure appropriate placement for our patients…”<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the end of the police interaction, the officer gave the homeless man a verbal warning and let him go on his way. It’s unknown if he was able to make it back home to St. Augustine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A spokesperson for the police department said they don’t have any firm numbers as of right now to show how many incidents they respond to on a daily or weekly basis. But, they’re working with the Polk County Homeless Coalition to get a better grasp on the issue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hospital patient dumping\u00a0continues to be a crisis in\u00a0Polk County, and the newly obtained body-camera video shows another recent incident. A Lakeland police officer responded to US 98 and George Jenkins… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":42241,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"0","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[12,14],"tags":[7625],"class_list":["post-42239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local","category-news","tag-hospital-patient-dumping-crisis-in-lakeland-continues"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42239"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42239\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}