BALTIMORE — In December, a 59-year-old woman who cannot speak after throat cancer surgery was left outside of a Baltimore homeless center with no money and no phone — in a city where she had no family and no close friends.
Vonda Wagner of Rowlesburg, West Virginia, had fallen into a black hole in the regulatory system designed to protect nursing home patients.
She wound up alone on the streets on a Saturday night due to multiple failures in Maryland’s nursing home system. The NMS Healthcare nursing facility in Hagerstown, Maryland, ordered Wagner to leave on Nov. 11 because her temporary Medicare benefits expired, according to Wagner’s medical records.
NMS sent Wagner to what regulators have identified as an unlicensed assisted-living facility in West Baltimore called Isaac Supportive Living Service LLC. The owner, Sharon Isaac, faces second-degree assault and theft charges in Baltimore Circuit Court following an altercation with Wagner, who accused Isaac of pushing her to the floor and attempting to choke her.
The West Virginia woman filed a restraining order in Baltimore District Court against Isaac that accused her of taking her bank card and cellphone and leaving Wagner on the sidewalk in front of an Our Daily Bread Employment Center in the shadow of an elevated expressway in downtown Baltimore.
“I felt like I was kidnapped,” Wagner said. During interviews, Wagner wrote her answers in longhand on a legal pad, since she was unable to speak.
Wagner’s case is an example of a long-standing problem within the nursing care system in Maryland, according to Anne Hurley, a former Maryland Legal Aid attorney involved in Wagner’s case. Nursing homes are required to discharge patients to facilities deemed safe and secure, a term that is vague, she said.
The system deals with sick patients, many of whom have problems paying for their care. In addition, the nursing homes see a financial incentive in discharging patients who cannot pay or are on Medicaid. And patients who are discharged may find themselves in an unregulated underworld of group homes and unlicensed assisted-living facilities.
