A relative died on Thursday (no need for condolences). He checked into a hospital after passing out and later died unexpectedly. The hospital has not said what the cause of death might have been. The doctors have refused to sign the death certificate, which means that the remains cannot be legally disposed of.
This all seems very fishy and is causing some pratical problems for my family members. Why won’t the doctors sign the death certificate? Aren’t they legally obligated to do so? If the cause of death is unknown, is the coroner required to investigate? To top it off, they harvested his organs. Can they legally harvest the organs of someone who has not been officially declared dead? Of course, this also makes a coroner’s investigation into the cause of death impossible.
It seems to me that the hospital has acted extremely irresponsibly and illegally. This happened in California, by the way.
chula, my condolences, if not for the death itself, then for the headaches it is apparently causing for the survivors. This all sounds very weird. A couple of things to consider:
Who was his next of kin? I believe the family is required to consent, even if the deceased had signed an organ donor card. If this is not true, I hope someone will post more specifics, as I am an organ donor, but my next of kin (Mom) is against organ donation for religious reasons. So if there is away to get around having her consent, I’d love to know about it myself.
It seems doubly fishy that they harvested organs if the cause of death hasn’t been officially determined.
I’d look at all the circumstances of the death VERY carefully. Hopefully someone with more expertise than I have will check in, but I’d suggest taking a long, hard look at the medical records, especially at the parts where he was released from medical care and the part where they decided to harvest the organs. And are the doctors who are refusing to sign the death certificate the same ones, or even from the same hospital, where he was treated after passing out?
I suuggest talking to secretaries rather than doctors. They are generally more able to communicate and able to find stuff out. Mind you, they cannot sign death certificates, but they can tell you why the doctors concerned haven’t/
I don’t think this is a hijack as much as something for you to worry about.
If there has been no death certificate signed, is the person still legally alive?? Especially in the eyes of the gov’t (ie taxes, real estate, assets, a will??).
Gosh, I hate to say it, but this is very interesting!
Do you know any nurses? Perhaps they know people that work at that hospital, and may be able to do some digging around for you…
Similar situation happened just recently to me. My wife’s dad passed away last month, and the doctor on duty refused to sign the death certificate, since he wasn’t my father-in-law’s physician. His physician couldn’t sign it because he was on extended vacation, or something. So, we tried to get the coroner to sign it, but he wouldn’t since there wasn’t an autopsy done (cause of death was suspected to be internal bleeding due to ulcers, but we never found out for certain).
So, we couldn’t plan the funeral, etc, without the death certificate, since my wife’s mother didn’t want to do an autopsy. Finally, since we were cross-country, and my wife and I had to get back to life, we set a date for the funeral, and pretty much told someone to sign the certificate, and the coroner said he would do an autopsy. However, criminal autopsies would take precedence, and he had 4 days to do it. In the end, an autopsy wasn’t done, and the coroner just signed the death certificate.
Chula, many of the answers to the questions you’re asking will vary by jurisdiction. Where did he die?
I agree with everybody else, though. This is very weird. Weird enough that if you don’t get some straight answers soon, you should start visiting local prosecutors. City, county, state, just work your way up the line. If you can convince a prosecutor that this is something strange that merits a closer look, you’ll have a very powerful ally.
I just talked to the deceased’s mother. She is the next of kin and did give permission to harvest the organs, not suspecting at the time that there were unresolved issues surrounding his death. That particular issue is not at stake here, though I wonder if they are required to inform her of the circumstances of his death before she can give consent.
I knew he had some health problems and was in his late 60s, so the death didn’t seem like a great shock. His mother tells me that the only life-threatening illness he had was diabetes and that his friend reported that the nurses had been especially inattentive. So our operating theory is that he died because the nurses failed to give him his medication. The doctors told his mother that they had ruled out heart attack, stroke, and a few other obvious suspects. (How could they know this without having some idea what did kill him?)
He was a patient in the hospital when he died. According to his friend, he called to ask her to pick him up. When she arrived, he wasn’t in his room, and she eventually found out he was in the ER. She saw him there, and he looked at her and seemed to mouth the words “help me.” There were no doctors, only nurses, in the room, and she said they were chatting and laughing.
Here’s where things get fishier… According to the hospital, he was found dead in the parking lot. They say he had dressed himself and left on his own. However, he still had his IV and other tubes in him. His mother suspects that if he was trying to leave it was to go get his insulin because the nurses hadn’t given it to him. Bottom line: either his friend or the hospital is lying about when and where he died.
Here is some California law I dug up regarding a doctor’s obligations to sign a death certificate:
This statute doesn’t specify what the doctor must do if s/he does not know the cause of death, but I’m guessing s/he writes “unknown” and possibly refers the matter to the coroner. This statute states this as an obligation of the last attending physician, not something s/he can choose not to do. (Who did you get to sign the certificate in the end, Viscera?) I also found a statute that specifies the kinds of deaths that the coroner must investigate, which include “all violent, sudden, or unusual deaths” and all unattended deaths. They’re saying that if we want an autopsy done it will cost $5000. Of course, the autopsy is likely to be inclusive since portions of his body have been removed.
My operating theory is that the nurses killed him by failing to get him his medication and possibly by failing to call a physician when they found him. Then they tried to cover it up by lying about when and where he died. The doctor either knew or suspected what was going on and refused to become implicated by signing the certificate. Allowing the organ harvesting to take place without the certificate was probably a mistake but achieved the result of destroying the evidence of what happened.
In my opinion, it’s time to start preparing a lawsuit. To be honest, I don’t think anyone is especially torn up about his death. Though I did see signs of a good heart in him, he was basically a sad, lonely, old man. None of us would have thought too much about the circumstances of his death if the funeral home hadn’t called to request a signed death certificate. But the hospital needs to be held accountable to ensure this doesn’t happen again.
yojimboguy, I’m not sure what county and city he was in, but I think it was probably Ventura or L.A. County. (My family’s in the Bay Area, so this is pain to deal with.) Anyway, it should be California law that governs. I doubt the hospital would have any criminal liability, so a prosecutor wouldn’t get involved.
If your theory is correct, then a coverup could well put the hospital staff under threat of criminal prosecution. And criminal prosecution of a coverup would help in a civil suit later against the hospital, again assuming your theiry is correct.
I’m not clear on what his friend is saying. Is she saying she was there at his actual death? Was she pushed out at some point? Was HE dressed in his street clothes when she saw him? This woman is going to be a key witness for you if you procede on your theory. You should talk to her at length, and then decide whether to talk to a lawyer.
Actually, it’s his closest relative who would need to make such a call.