Hospitals are supposed to report all medical malpractice incidents that occur at their facility, but Coney Island Hospital did not follow this rule when they covered up an incident of surgical malpractice after a foreign object was left inside a patient after surgery. That patient later died.
In July 2006, 54 year old Robert Asta went to the medical facility to undergo gastric bypass surgery. Since his family had urged him not to have the procedure, he waited until after the surgery to tell them what he’d done. He called his son Michael a day after the operation and told him he was in tremendous pain.
According to records, Robert called the hospital but was told that pain was normal following gastric bypass surgery. Shortly afterwards, however, the hospital contacted Mr. Asta and asked him to come in for further testing after lab tests came back abnormal.
Turns out the hospital already suspected that something had been left behind during Asta’s surgery. They performed a CT scan, but the results were inconclusive.
A few days later, Asta’s girlfriend contacted his son. She was concerned about Asta and asked Michael to come over. By the time he arrived, his father was dead. An autopsy later revealed that the cause of death was postoperative infection in the abdominal cavity due to “retention of surgical tubing”.
Coney Island Hospital did not report, however, that the incident occurred or that it was the direct result of Asta’s wrongful death. Rather, they reported the incident as an “unexpected death”.
The Asta family was able to produce internal hospital documents, however, that states that there was a “foreign object left in body during surgical operation”. Although the hospital never admitted fault, it was enough to get them to settle the medical malpractice case, agreeing to pay the Asta family $675,000.
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wow that must have been horrible im sorry for your lost