US Deporting Hundreds Of Undocumented Patients Using Medical Repatriation Process

Over the last five years, American hospitals have sent at least 600 immigrants who were in the U.S. illegally back to their home countries to avoid paying for long-term care after serious illness or injury.

Immigration advocates are concerned that the implementation of the Affordable Health Care act will bring with it an increase in "medical repatriation," the practice of hospitals flying undocumented immigrants to their native countries, often while they are unconscious.

"It really is a Catch-22 for us," said Dr. Mark Purtle, vice president of Medical Affairs for Iowa Health System. "This is the area that the federal government, the state, everybody says we're not paying for the undocumented."

Politix.topix.com reports while hospitals are required to provide emergency care for patients regardless of their citizenship status or ability to pay, the AP reported, the American Hospital Association does not monitor the repatriation of immigrant patients, nor does it have a policy in place regarding the issue.

The Center for Social Justice at Seton Hall University, however, does have documented "medical repatriation" cases in 15 states involving patients from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Lithuania, Mexico, the Philippines and South Korea.

The Huffington Post reported on a few different examples of this process; here's a look at one of the most dramatic examples from a report issued in December:

Quelino Ojeda Jimenez was working atop a building at Chicago's Midway Airport in 2010 when he fell, suffering injuries that left him nearly quadriplegic and reliant on a ventilator.

Advocate Christ Medical Center cared for Jimenez for four months, absorbing more than $650,000 in costs, according to a 2011 Chicago Tribune story.

Three days before Christmas that year, the hospital put him aboard a medical flight and sent him to Mexico, even though his family protested. Crying and unable to speak, Jimenez could do nothing to prevent his removal.

The receiving hospital in Mexico lacked rehabilitation services and could not afford new filters for his ventilator. After suffering two heart attacks and a septic infection, Jimenez died on Jan. 2, 2012.

Though doctors can't expect hospitals to provide costly, uncompensated care to patients indefinitely, "neither should physicians allow hospitals to arbitrarily determine the fate of an uninsured noncitizen immigrant patient," the council said.