Long-term care facilities routinely refuse to let residents return after a hospital stay, for a complex set of reasons.

Finding a new facility can be extremely difficult, leaving patients to languish at the hospital for weeks, months or even years.

Prolonged, unnecessary hospital stays are often detrimental to patients. They also reduce the number of available beds and drive up costs.

When John Albanese's 94-year-old mother fell and broke her nose at her assisted living facility in Warwick this spring, healing was the easy part. The hard part was getting her out of the hospital.

Within five days, she was ready to be discharged, Albanese said. But Halcyon West Bay , where she had lived for two years, wouldn’t take her back.

"This was a classic hospital dump," Albanese said.

Federal

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