The Silent Crisis: How Hospitals Fail Adults with Severe to Profound IDD or Autism

Introduction
Adults with severe to profound intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) or autism deserve competent, compassionate medical care. Instead, they face a system that patches them up in emergencies, piles on medications, and sends them home — without ever addressing the root cause, and leavig them with no follow through medical care onc discharged. This isn’t true care. It’s neglect, discrimination, and abandonment.

Crisis Care, Then Dismissal
When emergencies strike — seizures, infections, broken bones — hospitals will act. But once the immediate danger passes, care ends. Families are sent home with more prescriptions, more side effects, and no answers. The real issues remain untreated, and health continues to decline.

Passing the Buck
Doctors deflect responsibility rather than provide care:

• “He’s an adult with pediatric needs — not our department.”

• “He’s aged out of pediatrics.”

• “His condition is rare — we don’t know enough.”
  Some even admit, “People with disabilities like this didn’t live this long. We were never trained to care for them.” Instead of adapting, they simply refuse, leaving families trapped between departments and specialties that all say “not my job.”

Stereotypes and Misinformation
Beyond refusal, there’s ignorance. Doctors stereotype disabilities, applying assumptions that don’t fit. I was once told my son’s condition was “regressive.” When I asked how the doctor knew, he admitted: “I just did a quick Google search.” This is not expertise — it’s negligence disguised as authority. And it happens far too often.

Neglect by Design
The result is a cycle of Band-Aid medicine: stabilize, medicate, discharge, repeat. Instead of treating whole people, hospitals treat only symptoms. Instead of learning, they excuse themselves. Adults with severe to profound IDD or autism are left to decline, not because they cannot be helped, but because the system refuses to help them.

The Family’s Burden
Families become the experts, advocates, and watchdogs. We are forced to fight for every test, every referral, every ounce of care. We shouldn’t have to prove our loved one’s worth in order to receive treatment. Yet that is exactly what the system demands.

A Call for Change
This is more than a training gap. It’s discrimination. Hospitals must stop passing the buck, stop stereotyping, and stop settling for temporary fixes. They must commit to understanding and treating adults with severe to profound IDD or autism as equal human beings whose lives are worth the effort.

Conclusion
Until that shift happens, families will continue to carry the crushing burden of a medical community that chooses excuses over solutions. The refusal to truly care for these adults is not just a medical failure — it is a human rights crisis. And it must end.