Homeless dumping or patient dumping is the practice of hospitals or emergency services releasing homeless patients on the streets instead of placing them with a homeless shelter or retaining them, especially when they may require expensive medical care with minimal government reimbursement from Medicaid or Medicare. Many homeless people who have mental health problems can no longer find a place in a psychiatric hospital since the trend towards mental health deinstitutionalization from the 1960s onwards.
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History
The term "patient dumping" was first mentioned in the New York Times in articles published in the late 1870s describing the practice of private New York hospitals transporting poor and sickly patients by horse drawn ambulance to Bellevue Hospital, the city's preeminent public facility. The jarring ride and lack of stabilized care typically resulted in death of the patient and outrage of the public. Notwithstanding the passage of city ordinances prohibiting the practice it continued.
"Patient dumping" resurfaced in the 1980s, nationwide, with private hospitals refusing to examine or treat the poor and uninsured in the emergency departments (ED) and transferring them to public hospitals for further care and treatment. This refusal of care resulted in patient deaths and public outcry culminating with the passage of a federal anti-patient dumping law in 1986 known as the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act.