Patient 'dumping' burdens hospitals

One in an occasional series.

When the afternoon sunlight streamed in her hospital window, slashing through the venetian blinds, the shadows made Soon Ja Kim, 83, look as if she were behind bars.

In a real sense, she was.

She was admitted Dec. 23 and spent all winter in a private room at Abington Memorial Hospital. She watched the record snows outside her window and was still there for the purple crocuses of spring.

Mrs. Kim was approved for discharge Dec. 27, four days after she arrived.

But she had nowhere to go.

Her family had left her in Abington's emergency room with no intention of returning to get her. This was done not thoughtlessly, but in desperation, and with a heavy heart. There is slang in the hospital world for what the family had done: dumping.

It happens in many hospitals. One patient, for instance, just left after spending 10 years in a New Jersey hospital.

Mrs. Kim is 4-foot-8, speaks no English, and has been in America, illegally, for a decade. She has arthritic knees and can no longer stand. She needs a nursing home. But none will take her.

Because of her illegal status, she is ineligible for Medicaid, which pays the bill for two out of every three nursing-home residents. Without Medicaid, and with no means of her own, she became Abington's problem.

Covering illegal immigrants was a red-hot issue during the health-care debate. When President Obama vowed to Congress that "the reforms I'm proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally," Rep. Joe Wilson of South Carolina yelled, "You lie."

The final bill provides no remedy for Mrs. Kim.

On March 12, after 80 days, the charges - the sticker price that few pay - were $444,208.63. The true cost of her care, said Louis Incognito, Abington's reimbursement director, was $1,200 a day - $96,000, and rising.

Three generations

Mrs. Kim was living in South Korea in 1990 when her daughter, Mi Cha, married an American soldier stationed there, Terry Mason of Media.

Terry and Mi Cha Mason had a child, Krystal, an American citizen at birth.

The marriage dissolved.

Mi Cha Mason decided to raise her daughter in America. Of mixed race and with a single parent, Krystal would have a better life and receive a better education in the United States, her mother and father felt.

All three generations of women arrived on the same flight in December 1999. Krystal had an American passport. Her mother, as the wife of an American soldier, had a green card, granting her legal residency. And her grandmother, Mrs. Kim, came as a visitor, with a visa.

They received help finding an apartment from Terry Mason's brother, Fred, a local police officer. Terry Mason remained in South Korea and has not responded to e-mails. Krystal said she had little to no contact with her father.

Mrs. Kim never returned to South Korea. She cared for Krystal while Mi Cha worked at Best Produce, a Korean-owned market in Media, to support the three of them.

"I was like a wife to my daughter," Mrs. Kim said.

That arrangement worked fine until last fall, when Mrs. Kim became the one who needed care day and night.

On Oct. 2, Krystal, a senior at Penncrest High School, drove her grandmother to Riddle Memorial Hospital, four miles from home.

Mrs. Kim spent a week there, came home for three days, and went back for 52 more days, until Dec. 2, when she was discharged with a promise of help at home.