LOS ANGELES: A leading U.S. health insurance company reached a settlement Tuesday with the city of Los Angeles to reforms aimed at ending hospitals' practice of abandoning homeless patients to the streets.

The settlement comes more than a year after an elderly hospital patient, insured by Kaiser Permanente, was found wandering crime-ridden streets in a hospital gown and slippers.

Kaiser will create new protocols for discharging homeless patients in its chain of hospitals, train staff and allow retired U.S. District Court Judge Lourdes G. Baird, a former U.S. attorney, to monitor its progress, officials said Tuesday.

Carol Ann Reyes, 64, was discharged from Kaiser's Bellflower hospital in March 2006 and dropped off by a taxi outside the Union Rescue Mission. She wandered around, apparently confused, for several minutes until mission staff took her in.

Kaiser previously denied any wrongdoing. Kaiser spokeswoman Diana Bonta said in November that hospital staff had called a taxi to take Reyes to Skid Row, but called ahead to the mission to let staff know she was on her way.

Dr. Benjamin Chu, president of Kaiser Permanente's Southern California region, said Tuesday the release of Reyes was a breakdown in existing hospital protocol and an aberration.

"I don't think the policies and procedures were wrong," he said. "They just weren't as tight as we'd like them to be."

The settlement, he said, was "an example of what can happen when people of good will sit down together."

Mark Rosenbaum, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Southern California, said the lawsuit and settlement called attention to a rarely addressed nationwide problem.

"What happened to Ms. Reyes was disgraceful and this agreement will help bring dignity back to the treatment of homeless people in this city's hospitals," he said.