The Pay-to-Play Care Directory Trap

Why your hospital discharge planner's "preferred list" is actually a paid referral catalog.

The social worker at the hospital hands you a photocopied list of six local nursing homes, marked with a star next to three 'preferred partners.' Your mom is recovering from a broken hip, her discharge is scheduled for tomorrow morning at 9:00 AM, and you have exactly eighteen hours to choose her next home. What no one tells you is that some of those starred facilities are on that list simply because they signed a contract to accept the hospital's overflow, or because they pay a massive finder's fee to a middleman. It is a system built on real estate commissions, not actual safety standards.

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