Thread: Fla. hospital accused of deporting patient

Posted on Thursday, 07.09.09
Fla. hospital accused of deporting patient
By LAURA WIDES-MUNOZ

STUART, Fla. -- The guardian of a Guatemalan man with serious brain damage is suing a South Florida hospital, alleging that the facility illegally deported the uninsured patient to his native country after he racked up more than $2 million in medical bills.

The hospital says Luis Alberto Jimenez, an illegal immigrant who suffered severe brain trauma after a February 2000 accident caused by a drunk driver, repeatedly said he wanted to go home to Guatemala. The guardian says Jimenez objected to being sent back.

The trial opened quietly this week in the sleepy coastal town of Stuart, but the six-member jury's verdict could influence how hospitals across the U.S. handle long-term care for illegal immigrants. Hospitals are struggling under the staggering costs of treating the nation's roughly 47 million uninsured, and illegal immigrants make up an estimated 15 percent of this group.

Jimenez's relatives in the U.S. are seeking unspecified damages.

On Thursday, their attorney William King showed e-mails documenting Martin Memorial Medical Center officials' plans for returning the patient during the summer of 2003. None of them had been shared with Jimenez's cousin Gaspar Montejo, who had become his legal guardian because Jimenez was deemed too brain damaged to make his own decisions.

"It is not worth the risk to send him on a commercial flight," wrote hospital attorney Rob Lord, at one point. "I can envision really bad publicity if things don't go according to plan."

Montejo accuses the hospital of secretly spiriting Jimenez back to Guatemala on a private plane accompanied by staff. Meanwhile, Montejo said the family's attorney was frantically seeking an emergency order to halt the deportation and appealing an earlier ruling in favor of the move. That ruling was later overturned on appeal, laying the grounds for the family's lawsuit. The case is before Martin County Senior Circuit Judge James Midelis.

The 37-year-old was uninsured and wasn't eligible for Medicaid because he was in the U.S. illegally. Because the hospital received federal funding, it was required to make sure all patients, regardless of their ability to pay, would receive appropriate medical care upon discharge.

Montejo says the hospital knew that Guatemala lacked the resources to care for him. He also said the hospital usurped federal authority in deciding that Jimenez could be deported.

The hospital argues that it received a letter from the Guatemalan government assuring that Jimenez, who now needs to use a wheelchair, could get the care he needed in his home country. After being treated at an urban hospital in Guatemala, he went to live with his mother in a village about 12 hour's drive from the capital in the department of Huehuetenango.

The nonprofit Pew Hispanic Center estimates that nearly 60 percent of the more than 11 million illegal immigrants living in the United States have no health insurance.

But it is the federal government, not states or hospitals, that is generally responsible for determining a patient's immigration status and whether an individual should be returned to his country.

King emphasized the importance of the case Thursday, introducing an e-mail written by former Martin CEO Dick Harman days before the hospital flew Jimenez to Guatemala, in which Harman discussed trying to interest national hospital associations in funding the legal costs.

"It may be useful in helping to fix an industrywide problem," Harman wrote a Martin hospital attorney.



http://www.miamiherald.com/news/florida ... 33869.html

This could be very BIG!

How old is this story. Seems like I read this same story several weeks ago. Either the Miami Herald is behind the times are there has been an update to the story.