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

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

I’ve worked IT systems for hospitals my entire career; this Hospital franchise uses Epic Systems as their EMR, I know it well, I have like 7 certs for Epic System modules. There is a TON of paperwork associated with a discharge against medical advice since the hospitals definitely want to cover their butts in such cases.

There is ZERO chance the hospital mixed her release as leaving against medical advice and/or have the documentation to back that up. Even if the person just sneaks out of the hospital, that is considered a “code” alert (colour depends on the hospital) until they can determine the patient is not in danger to themselves or others. Again, ZERO chance this happened without more than one person knowingly falsifying records… best I can imagine to give the Hospital the benefit of doubt, is criminal negligence

Moreover, death in hospitals and handling (as in moving and storing) of human remains has an even bigger avalanche of regulations and documentation, all of which would have to be completely missing for them not to notice.