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Kaiser error leads to cremation mix-up |
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Written by DeadGirl
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Wednesday, 19 May 2004 |
May 15, 2004
Oakland hospital mislabels priest's body
By John Geluardi and Rebecca Vesely
OAKLAND -- An apparent mistake in identification at Kaiser Permanente Oakland Medical Center resulted in the body of an Episcopal priest first being misplaced and then cremated Friday in place of an elderly woman's, police said Tuesday.
According to Oakland police, last week Kaiser staff somehow incorrectly tagged the body of Thomas Douglas "Dewey" Schwartzenburg, 59, who died May 11.
He was tagged with the name of a great-grandmother and longtime resident of the Fruitvale district, police said. Her family asked that her name not be used.
Kaiser staff then turned Schwartzenburg's misidentified body over to a local mortuary that cremated the body Friday, thinking it was the great-grandmother's, police said.
Officials said the state Department of Health Services is investigating the incident.
Kaiser officials have declined comment other then to say they tried to contact Schwartzenburg's family Friday, three days after his death, and that he had been "inadvertently" released to a mortuary.
Schwartzenburg, an Episcopal priest and editor of the Coastal Conservancy's Coast & Ocean magazine, had been reported missing last week by friends and co-workers. He was last seen at the magazine's downtown Oakland office May 10.
According to Oakland police Officer Jesse Grant, Schwartzenburg called 9-1-1 just after 1 a.m. on May 11, complaining of chest pains. He was given directions to Kaiser Medical Center, where he parked his car in the lot and walked into the emergency room. Shortly after he arrived, he died of a heart attack, according Kaiser officials. And some time after that, Kaiser staff lost track of him.
"We called the hospital on (May) 13th and 14th as part of our missing-person investigation and both times hospital officials said they never heard of him," Grant said.
Then, on Friday, Colonial Chapel Funeral Directors in Oakland sent a removal service to pick up the body of the great-grandmother, who had also died last week. At Kaiser's morgue, the removal service picked up a body contained in a sealed, white plastic body bag, which was tagged with the woman's name, police said.
Her family had requested a speedy cremation, and in accordance with their wishes, the body was taken directly from the mortuary to a crematorium at Mountain View Cemetery, where it was cremated. Colonial Chapel owner Paul Scudder said it is not unusual for a body that is going to be cremated to never be removed from the body bag.
Grant said police discovered the mistake on Sunday. Grant had obtained a record of the 9-1-1 call Schwartzenburg made May 11, which led police to Kaiser Medical Center. However, Kaiser officials denied Schwartzenburg was there and would not allow Grant to speak with the attending physician, the officer said.
"Finally, on Monday, myself, another officer and a sergeant went into the morgue and physically looked at everybody in the morgue," he said. "There were about six people there and we matched them to a list we found there and discovered one person showed to have been checked out but was still there."
Kaiser notified the state Department of Health Services of the mishap Monday, and the department's licensing and certification division has already launched an investigation to determine how the bodies were misidentified.
According to Scott Vivona, the state health agency's chief of field operations, misidentification of corpses is rare.
"This is extremely unusual, obviously something went wrong," he said. "We'll be looking at all of Kaiser's policies and procedures in case of a death, as well as the sequence of events from the time these two people entered the hospital."
Grant said there are still a lot of unanswered questions and police are continuing their investigation into what happened at Kaiser Medical Center.
"As far as I know, Kaiser hasn't yet filled out a death certificate, so we don't know for sure what Schwartzenburg died of," he said. "For that matter, we're not sure if it was him who was cremated last Friday. Family members will have to do a DNA test on the ashes to find that out."
http://www.oaklandtribune.com/Stories/0,1413,82~1865~2157837,00.html |
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Taphophilia?
taphophilia (taf′ō-fil′ē-ă)
ORIGIN:
From the Greek words taphos, meaning "tomb" or "sepulcher" and philia, meaning "attraction or affinity to something, in particular the love or obsession with something"
DEFINITION: 1. An excessive interest in graves and cemeteries. 2. A love or fondness for funerals, graves, and cemeteries. 3. In psychiatry, a morbid attraction to graves and cemeteries
Quote Repository
“Its funny the way most people love the dead. Once you are dead, you are made for life.” Jimi Hendrix, Rolling Stone, D
Shirtless and Sculpted
The Men of Mortuaries 2008 Calendar is now available! All sale proceeds benefit KAMMCARES, a breast cancer foundation.
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