In April, Laguna Honda Hospital (LHH) was decertified by the federal government because of a finding that LHH violated quality of care standards. This means that LHH will stop receiving Medi-Cal and Medicare payments after September 13, 2022. LHH also had to create a closure plan to show the federal government how it would transfer and relocate all of its patients and residents. Our colleagues at Disability Rights California have created a fact sheet for LHH residents to explain their rights during the closure process.
Close it. Close it. Close it. We the impoverished, we especially the homeless, I’ve been homeless now for 15 years in San Francisco & to date I’ve had six friends in laguna honda hospital. All six in my opinion were neglected and mistreated. Many of the people that interact with the patients the most are people who should not have any kind of power over anyone that is weaker than them. These are the bottom of the barrel that is why they will work for under $30 an hour some even work for under $20 an hour. Every time I have visited Laguna Honda hospital to visit said friends, I am shocked and outraged at the decrepit neglected ways that people and the facility are treated. Every time I go there it’s like a disgusting trip through cigarette smoke Haze right up to and around the entrances because the residents are allowed to smoke within 5 ft of entry doors. Compare that to any hospital in San Francisco which all have a smoking ban on their entire campuses. Just stepping foot onto the property in the places on the campus where you will interact with people, you will see many things that will disturb and upset you and make you wonder, why are these people being neglected like this?
Laguna Honda has had umpteen chances and choices to make in order to improve its facility via higher funding. Yet no one there has advocated ie, employee especially Dr strikes could have achieved this. It seems that the status quo there was allowed to bulldoze any hope of improvement and it ever becoming a real care facility that cares for people like the care facilities that cost $5,000 a month or more out of pocket: you know, the kind of care facilities for the upper upper middle class and the wealthy. We all deserve the same care. That is what our constitution tells us. That is what our Bible tells us. That is what our Quran tells us. That is what our bagava ghita tells us. That is what our human nature tells us. There were too many people at Laguna Honda who could have chosen to do the right thing day in Day out, minutes in minutes out, second and second out: from the people at the very bottom of the pay and superiority scale who were mistreating residents for their own personal sick needs to be better than the next one, to the people at the very top with their laissez-faire attitudes and their viewpoint of, “these people are worth less than everyone else because they are poor so therefore we are going to treat them with a sense of disdain and superiority” to the absolutely pitiful inadequate amount of funding they receive due to the personal selfishness of all, yes every single one, of the privileged residents of San Francisco city, the county, the state of California and our country who want to send their loved ones to board and Care facilities that cost $5,000, $10,000 a month, like the hospice Drew Barrymore put her father in the last few months of his life, while providing severely substandard in comparison facilities for anyone not lucky enough to have their amount of money. Let them close it and be faced with the task of building a new or renovating it completely from the ground up. The people who upset me the most out of all of this are the staff who have worked there for decades who keep whining insisting this facility is worth keeping open when they see day-to-day what goes on there. There is a desperation at Laguna Honda that is clear and evident from the moment a person interacts with any other humans on that campus. That desperation MUST GO IF THIS PLACE IS EVER TO SURVIVE!!!
Residents should refuse transfer en masse citing inappropriate discharge. Would at least buy them some time. Even CANHR is against closure of this vital facility. It is the incompetent personnel who need to be transferred out; not the residential patients. Severe overreach by state and federal regulators. Fight back!