On July 28, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) approved a desperately-needed pause to the transfer and discharges of Laguna Honda residents, whose home and lives were placed in jeopardy when CMS decertified the facility on April 14 and directed it to relocate its nearly 700 residents by September 13. Laguna Honda is the nation’s largest nursing home and is owned and operated by the City and County of San Francisco. The temporary pause in transfers followed the tragic deaths of at least nine transferred residents, growing public outrage that residents are being transferred to homeless shelters and dangerous nursing homes, a unanimous resolution by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors urging the federal government to suspend the relocation of residents, and public officials pleading for a stop to the “human rights atrocity.”  As of July 24, Laguna Honda reported it had transferred or discharged 57 residents and that 608 residents remained at the facility.
(posted August 9, 2022)