Although visitation rights are determined by patients, a Tennessee woman was prevented from seeing her partner after a hospital turned her away since she want not a legal spouse or family member. Val Burke, a Tennessee woman, is asking officials at Rolling Hills Hospital why she was excluded from her partner’s room, but so far, she has not received any answers.
“I went to visit her at the appropriate visiting time and was turned away,” said Burke in a statement to Out and About Newspaper. “We have been living together for three years now, but that didn’t matter to them either. The rest of her family is out of town, so she didn’t have any one visit her.”
Burke was allowed to visit her partner only when the patient’s mother was present.
Federal regulations allow patients to choose who has visitation rights, including those on Medicare and Medicaid.
According to the paper, “hospital administration were made aware of the incident and addressed this policy with staff on Monday, according to Chris Sanders, chair of TEP’s Nashville committee.”
“(This) is a very troubling report and it reminds us of the importance of this rule change that recently went into effect,” said Sanders. “When we are at our most vulnerable, we need to be able to choose who visits us in the hospital.”
UPDATE: Val Burke announced via Facebook that she has finally been granted visitation to her partner. “Today I received a call from an administrator at the hospital who asked me if I wanted to come and visit today,” she said. “We set a date for [Wednesday] to visit, since I missed the ONLY real visitation on Sunday.”
