The California Department of Public Health (DPH) recently cited Driftwood Healthcare Center, a nursing home in Hayward, for violating the rights of a resident when it was found to have engaged in an illegal unplanned and dangerous late-night discharge.

The resident left the facility for one hour on the evening of August 15, 2012. When he returned, he was told that he had “discharge [sic.] himself” and was not allowed to return to his room. The Alameda County Sheriff’s Department was called and they erroneously forced the resident outside where he was left in the street near the nursing home’s sign. The resident, who has two leg amputations, a catheter, insulin dependent diabetes, lumbago, and four pressure ulcers, was rescued by his distraught sister – who found the resident slumped in his wheelchair still at the nursing home sign – over 18 hours later. He was transferred by ambulance to a hospital for treatment.

DPH found that Driftwood Healthcare Center had violated multiple federal laws and its own policies by discharging the resident without a destination, meal plan, transportation, medication, insulin, wound care supplies, a phone, or a method for charging the battery in his wheelchair.

DPH found that the facility had given the resident a post-discharge plan of care that told the resident “go to ER if needs help.”