NEW YORK -- When a New York hospital called a Virginia man and asked him to rate the facility's care of his dead son, there was one major problem.
Beth Israel Hospital had failed to notify the father previously that his son had been hospitalized, let alone dead, according to documents filed last week in Manhattan State Supreme Court."This was obviously an extremely shocking and horrible way for the family to discover that their close relative had died," the Bowman family said in the paperwork.
The Bowmans have filed a $13 million lawsuit, charging that Beth Israel conducted an unauthorized autopsy on Lewis Bowman Jr., buried him in a pauper's grave and failed to tell them he was dead even though he had identified his father as his next of kin. His father has since died.
Bowman, who was a 47-year-old brick layer, died in the hospital of pulmonary embolism, a blood clot in a lung, on Aug. 14, 1998. But his father didn't receive the call until Feb. 9, 1999, court papers say.
In a statement, the hospital said it was "deeply sorry that the family members in Virginia were not notified of the death of our patient Lewis Bowman Jr."
It added that it worked with the family to rebury Bowman and paid the full cost.