Jessie Peterson’s family spent a year searching for her after they were told that she had checked herself out of a California hospital against medical advice – before they learned that she had been dead all along.
The 31-year-old died in the care of Mercy San Juan medical center in Sacramento in April 2023. The hospital shipped her body to a storage facility and did not inform her mother and sisters. The family only learned her fate the following April after months of trying to find her, according to a civil lawsuit against the hospital.
In the lawsuit, filed earlier this month, the family described the hospital’s conduct as “malicious and outrageous” and accused the facility of negligence, the negligent handling of a corpse and negligent infliction of emotional distress.
To be fair they said she was not with us anymore. okay really bad for /s but I dunno the whole thing like everything in this millenium is just so crazy fucked up crying type of laughter.
There might be miscommunication in the beginning, but if the family is showing up at the coroner’s office and repeatedly asking the hospital for information, that should have sparked an investigation by the hospital.
I worked at Lowe’s and it was horrible, but if someone had showed up asking about a fucking refrigerator we would have launched an investigation.
If they keep coming you asking where the hell their refrigerator went that just left your store, you would.
Yes, that is what I said
Hospital Admin: “Is this patient giving me money right now?”
Ward Assistant: “Sir, she’s dead.”
Admin: “Why is she wasting space that could be giving me money? Do something with it.”
Ward Assistant: “I think we should notify the family.”
Admin: “That sounds like a waste of time that doesn’t give me money”.
This reminds me of the spongebob episode where krabs was in hospital and, because of money, was moved out before the vending machine, then to the parking place, and finally kicked down the hill. Back then it was funny but being reminded of it by the real world feels very much… not good.
Dignity Health, which operates Mercy San Juan…
Yep, really going for dignity.
She checked out but she could never leave
Checks out
Against medical advice
Hospital California. The Eagles lesser known version.
On a dark doctors x-ray
Cool wind, no health care,
Warm smell of corruption,
Rising up through the air,
The Vultures?
“Checked out” - technically…
I hear Hitler also checked out of WW2 near the end of the war
“Checked out” equals deceased. It’s not like they were in a hotel.
That’s a colloquial use, not proper terminology.
c\technicallytheturth
Are you prepared to tell the turth, the whole turth, and nothing but the turth?
How about c:\techni~1
I’m partial to /user/home/c/technicallythetruth/
We’ll I’ll agree that it’s better than c:/user/home/technicallythetruth/
You can’t handle the turth!
WTF!? How is the state health board not jumping into a complete investigation of this hospital at this point and/or shutting this place down? I have so many questions. The first of many is how did they “store” this body so that it decomposed to the point of being unrecognizable? This whole thing reads like they let her die from malpractice and then threw the body in a closet to hide the evidence.
They made profits last quarter, no need to investigate since that’s all that matters in this country.
Privatized hospitals…
I’m gonna guess that a traveling nurse did this.
Huh?
That will be two million dollars
Her body was so decomposed the family could not obtain her fingerprints or hold an open casket funeral, and an autopsy that could have indicated whether there had been medical malpractice associated with her death was “rendered impossible”, according to the lawsuit.
This is fishy as fuck
At this point, you should just assume some sort of medical malpractice, and likely, sexual assault. Better to face a lawsuit about mishandling of a corpse, than a lawsuit about your staff assaulting patients under their care. From a business perspective, it’s a no-brainer /s
Nice, so a destruction of evidence cse as well
Honestly, this might be the simplest explanation. This would be a uniquely stupid mistake otherwise.
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I was waiting for the story to be that they were finally told when a debt collector contacted them about unpaid body storage fees.
This is sadly not the first time I’ve heard about this, and the first time I did involved the hospital literally calling a Taxi for the corpse, sending it home, and assuring the cab driver he was just sleeping.
The family was not amused
Our culture is getting worse.
