A family who cannot care for a loved one with dementia has no legal obligation to take them home from hospital, says a lawyer with the Advocacy Centre for the Elderly.

The comments, from Jane Meadus, follow a Spectator story about a desperate daughter who abandoned her mother with dementia at the ER. She did so despite what she called relentless pressure from Joseph Brant Hospital and the local LHIN (Local Health Integration Network) to take her mom home. She felt the move was the only way she would get help.

Jo Brant said families are expected under the Health Care Consent Act to be available and to take patients home.

However, Meadus, the Advocacy Centre lawyer, says "There is nothing in law that requires a family member in this situation to take that patient home.

"We may have a moral obligation, but not a legal one."

The flip side of taking someone home when you cannot care for them is that you can be criminally charged for failing to provide the necessities of life, Meadus said.

"Here, the family is saying we can't provide that care. Well, there is no legal obligation for them to take them home. The hospital cannot make them do it."

Jo Brant did not provide further comment this week regarding families and patient discharges.

Meadus said the Advocacy Centre for the Elderly gets a large number of complaints from the Hamilton LHIN area — mostly about discharges from hospital. And the local LHIN is among the top two in the province for most complaints at the Advocacy Centre, she adds.

"We probably get a number of calls a day on this."

In 2016, the Centre had 500 such discharge complaints, but now have "way more" says Meadus.

Both the hospital and the LHIN said earlier that they strive to be supportive of families.

Ministry of Health and Long-term Care spokesperson David Jensen said hospitals could bill discharged patients who won't leave. Some may charge $1,000 per day.

Patients awaiting placement in long-term care (LTC) can be charged up to $60 a day or $1,848 a month, he said.

Read more:

Hamilton senior says LHIN bullying her to put husband in long-term care 'dump'

Brigitte Leveille-Bolduc's father was her mom Jeannine's caregiver, but when he was rushed to Joseph Brant Hospital this past January with chest pains, there was no one home to care for his wife.

Both Leveille-Bolduc and her brother were working, so they called an ambulance to take their mom to hospital.

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By this time, Jeannine, who was now violent, was receiving a bit of home-care and was on the crisis list for a long-term care bed. Still, the Hamilton Niagara Haldimand Brant LHIN, and the hospital, demanded Leveille-Bolduc take her mother home, Leveille-Bolduc said.

The Health Ministry did not answer a question on whether policies for the ER — where Leveille-Bolduc abandoned her mother — are any different. There was also no answer to whether a family would be required to pay for a loved one's time at the ER.

Leveille-Bolduc said the hospital threatened to charge her if she didn't take her mother home, but she still refused.

After a week in the ER hallway, Jeannine finally got a bed in a locked down ward of a nursing home — something the family had been trying to get for several years.

"The fact that the system is so broken, that families have to resort to this ... is not their fault," says Meadus.

"There's a lot of manipulations and problems, especially in that LHIN," Meadus said of the Hamilton LHIN, which includes Burlington.

Meadus said, for example, people might be told they can't apply for a long-term care bed while the patient is in hospital, because that might make it more difficult to get a patient out of hospital.

Or that the family must purchase home-care services if they can't get enough hours of care through the LHIN.

"They make these threats all the time. It's illegal," says Meadus, who has written about discharge from hospital to LTC issues.

In reality, people can apply for long-term care at any time. And if the LHIN can't provide the level of care needed to keep an elderly patient at home, it can't make you hire care privately, she said.

cfragomeni@thespec.com

905-526-3392 | @CarmatTheSpec