A Western Australian hospital is facing claims of a shocking morgue mix-up in which a 55-year-old man was allegedly placed in a body bag while he was still alive.
In a complaint sent to the state’s coroner, a doctor alleged Kevin Reid was taken from a ward to the Rockingham General Hospital’s mortuary before he was dead.
The doctor also claimed he was asked to cover-up the macabre mistake, which he refused to do.
“It’s deeply alarming that this occurred,” Australian Medical Association WA president Dr Mark Duncan-Smith said.
9News has obtained a copy of the doctor’s complaint to the coroner.
It states Reid, a palliative care patient, was pronounced dead by nurses on the ward on September 5.
Last rites were given and his body was prepared before it was transferred to the morgue a few hours later and placed in a body bag.
No doctor was called to certify the death, which is standard protocol.
“The nurse undertook the assessment on the ward, the doctor confirmed the following day that the patient was deceased. Ideally you would do that on the ward,” South Metropolitan Health Service chief executive Paul Forden said.
Duncan-Smith said his understanding was that ”basically an evaluation of life-extinct needs to be made by a doctor before the body is moved”.
On September 6, after the morgue questioned the lack of a death certificate, the doctor was asked to go and issue one.
When the body bag was unzipped, the doctor was stunned by what he saw. Reid’s eyes were open and there was fresh blood from a cut to an arm.
The other arm was over his right shoulder.
“I believe the frank blood from a new skin tear, arm position and eye signs were inconsistent with a person who was post-mortem on arrival at the morgue,” the doctor told the coroner last week.
Forden said the doctor, who quit on Friday, “raised concerns appropriately with the coroner’s office”.
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“I would not try to suppress anyone in a medical profession raising concerns,” Forden said.
The doctor claimed hospital officials asked him to backdate the death certificate to fit with the time the patient was taken to the morgue.
He wrote that he believed “there are governance, compliance and integrity issues”.
“The doctor was requested to consider whether they would be prepared to put the time of death as the previous day when the nurse had assessed the death, the doctor declined to do that,” Forden said.
“My understanding was he was requested to do it twice.”
Australian Nursing Federation WA secretary Janet Reah said she was “shocked”.
When Reid passed away, his brother, not knowing what had happened, posted a tribute online which said “he’ll be in our hearts forever”.
Forden said the undertaker “raised a concern that the death certificate was dated for a day after the patient had died”.
Opposition spokesperson Libby Mettam described the reports as “horrific”.
”If what the doctor is saying is true this points to a culture of cover up across the WA health system,” she said.
9News can reveal the Corruption and Crime Commission is investigating the case because any direction to backdate a death certificate could be deemed serious misconduct by a public officer.
Health chiefs said Reid’s family was satisfied by the way the date of his death was managed.
But it was only when their funeral director raised concerns that a light was shone on the hospital’s protocols.
