By Dorsey Griffith — Sacramento Bee Medical Writer
Published 9:20 pm PDT Wednesday, May 24, 2006
Two state departments are investigating the traumatic case of how a deceased baby was mistakenly removed from a hospital morgue and then buried in a grave with another family’s infant twins.
All the babies died in Kaiser Permanente Medical Center, Sacramento, where apologetic hospital officials declined to elaborate on how the heart-wrenching blunder could have occurred.
The state Department of Consumer Affairs, which regulates private funeral homes and cemeteries, confirmed Wednesday that Thompson Funeral Home Inc. of Sacramento could face a citation or other disciplinary action for its role in the removal and burial of little Vivian Marie Weathers.
“We have opened the case up today,” said Sherrie Moffet-Bell, chief of the Cemetery and Funeral Bureau for the Department of Consumer Affairs. “A field inspector is going out there tomorrow.”
And the state Department of Health Services will investigate how Kaiser’s Sacramento medical center on Morse Avenue erroneously released the baby’s remains to the funeral home in the first place.
“(Hospitals) have to have policies and procedures in which to handle their morgue cases,” said DHS spokeswoman Patti Roberts. “If we determine there are deficiencies, the hospital is required to submit an acceptable plan of correction to fix them.”
San Jose attorney Mark Sigala, hired by the Weathers family, said the Weathers baby was born prematurely on May 12 after 22 weeks of gestation and died less than two hours later.
Before the family was able to make funeral arrangements, the infant’s corpse was picked up by a funeral director from Thompson Funeral Home, who had gone to Kaiser with the mission of collecting the remains of premature twins who had died within the same time frame. Kaiser officials confirmed that the twins had been bundled together, and the Weathers baby was wrapped separately.
“I don’t know how she got away with three infant bodies,” said LaDonna G. Olden, managing funeral director at Thompson, referring to her colleague at the mortuary who was filling in while Olden was on vacation.
Moffet-Bell said mortuary staff are supposed to check the tags attached to the corpses against the mortuary paperwork before removing them.
“The critical thing here is the numbers are inaccurate,” said Moffet-Bell. “They were supposed to pick up two, and they picked up three. Either there was a typographical error or the person who picked up the bodies didn’t match the paperwork.”
Kaiser officials acknowledged that mistakes were made.
“Obviously, our policies weren’t followed, and the employee involved in releasing the bodies did not double-check the identities,” said Kathleen McKenna, a Kaiser spokeswoman.
The mix-up comes on the heels of another embarrassing crisis involving the giant HMO. Earlier this month, Kaiser said it would close its 2-year-old Northern California kidney transplant program in the wake of a state investigation into reports that hundreds of patients, including many from Sacramento, were not properly scheduled for potential transplants.
Of the baby mix-up, Kaiser’s McKenna said, “We deeply regret the situation.”
The mistake didn’t end there, however.
The Weathers baby was then buried in the same grave as the twins in St. Mary’s Cemetery in Sacramento on May 16.
Cemetery staff had no way of knowing that the two small caskets they received from the funeral home contained a total of three bodies, said Monsignor James Murphy of the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament and a spokesman for the diocese that operates the cemetery.
“It is disturbing that this would happen,” Murphy said. “The loss of a child is already painful enough, without having this horrible mix-up.”
Olden, from the Thompson Funeral Home, said she could not explain how one mistake led to another.
“In all instances, I would hope the funeral director would open up the package and see what is inside,” she said. “That didn’t happen. That’s what I need to investigate.”
Sigala, the attorney, said the mix-up was discovered when another funeral home, Lombard & Co. of Sacramento, sent a representative to collect the body of the deceased Weathers baby on May 15.
“When they go to pick up the baby at Kaiser, they are told the baby is lost,” Sigala said.
Kaiser then did its own investigation, which eventually resulted in the exhumation of the twins’ grave. On May 16, the Weatherses learned that their infant daughter’s remains had been discovered.
“It’s unimaginable,” said Sigala, who has not filed a lawsuit at this point. “It’s so devastating to the family. Words can’t express their grief.”
Lombard & Co. issued the following statement Wednesday about its role in the case:
“We have worked very closely with the family and have supported them through a very difficult time,” said manager Amanda Amundson. “Fortunately, we were able to help resolve the confusion that occurred so that the family’s wishes would be carried out.”
Vivian Marie’s body has since been buried in a cemetery in Santa Clara.
More:
May 26, 2006, from KCRA3 via Yahoo news: State Agencies Investigating Burial Mix-Up — Two state agencies are now investigating the mix-up of bodies at the Kaiser Sacramento Medical Center.