The AP (11/17, Jojola) reported an ongoing investigation is tracking a “growing health care epidemic where hundreds of people” with dementia and similar conditions “are abandoned every year at metro-area hospitals,” a problem which “is costing hospitals and in some cases, taxpayers, millions of dollars a year.” Many such “at-risk adults…end up languishing in hospitals because they have no family to take care of them or a facility willing to take them in due to a lack of space, finances, or appropriate scope of care.” According to one survey of hospitals in the Denver area, “on a single day in September 113 at-risk adults were stuck in the system, beyond medical necessity,” and about 30 percent had mental health issues such as dementia.
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— “People without caregivers end up stranded in hospitals, “Jeremy Jojola, AP, November 17, 2018.