The last thing someone wants when they lose a loved one is for the body to go missing.
But that’s exactly what happened to Dana Venosta three years ago.
According to court documents filed in a 2019 lawsuit against the hospital, the body of Dana Venosta’s mother, who passed away at 76, went "missing" at the Good Samaritan Hospital on February 4, 2018, "because another body was stacked on top of it for days."
The hospital and its parent company, HCA Healthcare, settled the suit, saying staff failed to follow storage protocols and the error was corrected, according to reporting by NBC Bay Area.
But that wasn’t the only incident. Only a month later, Jillian Monteleone suddenly lost her pregnancy.
Workers labeled the body of her baby as "tissue" and disposed of it. "[A hospital social worker] ended up calling me back saying ‘We’re sorry but [Good Samaritan Hospital] cannot find the body. They threw out the body'," Monteleone said.
A hospital spokesperson said, in Monteleone’s case, there was a significant delay by the family in arranging for the mortuary to come, which Monteleone disputes.
And Good Samaritan Hospital isn’t the only HCA-owned hospital in the Bay Area where this has happened.
HCA also owns Regional Medical Center in San Jose.
State inspectors cited Regional Medical Center for "[failure] to provide considerate, respectful care to two patients …this failure resulted in [one of its patient’s] remains being held at a local mortuary for 298 days and [another patient’s] remains being held in the hospital morgue for 108 days."
In an email to NBC Bay Area, a hospital spokesperson admitted staff should have been more proactive when transferring the remains to the Santa Clara County Public Administrator.
A former employee witnessed this type of behavior all the time at Regional Medical Center. This person is remaining anonymous because they still work in the industry and fear retaliation.
In at least one incident they said a body liquified because it wasn’t properly stored in the morgue.
"We'd have six bodies and only four refrigerators. The transport orderlies would have to go down and rotate the bodies," the former employee said. "This had nothing to do with staffing issues…just lack of care."
Another source said hospitals would often "double-stack" bodies but only during events like a pandemic or an accident causing a high number of unexpected casualties.
"What you’re describing is another way HCA penny-pinched," the source said.
In a statement, Janine De La Vega, a spokesperson for both hospitals, called the cases rare and unusual.
"In these cases, we simply did not live up to our commitment. We can and should have done better," De La Vega wrote.
"We have investigated these incidents in detail and, as a result, have instituted a number of changes in our policies, processes and oversight to prevent them from happening again...We know that [these incidents] have caused grief to the families involved. For that, we are sincerely sorry," she added.
Good Samaritan Hospital is currently facing several serious deficiencies federal regulators issued last month. The deficiencies put the hospital’s Medicare contract at risk. These latest issues involving mishandled bodies were not part of that report.
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