US woman mistakenly declared dead, found gasping inside body bag at funeral home

The hospice care facility is being fined thousands after the state’s inspector reportedly found that it did not treat their resident with dignity and did not provide her appropriate care.

A hospice facility in Iowa is being fined $10,000 after it mistakenly presumed a woman was dead but was found gasping for air inside of a body bag at a funeral home more than two hours later, according to a report from the Iowa Department of Inspections and Appeals.

On January 3, a staff member at Glen Oaks Alzheimer’s Special Care Center in Urbandale determined that the 66-year-old woman had died when she checked on her and found no signs of life, according to the report.

The woman’s “mouth was open, her eyes were fixed, and there were no breath sounds,” , the report said, noting the nurse whom she called on was unable to find a pulse using a stethoscope.

The hospice then called the woman’s family member as well as the funeral home. The director of the funeral home arrived at 7:38 a.m. local time and placed her “inside a cloth bag and zipped it shut,” the report said. However, about 40 minutes later, at 8:26 a.m., when funeral home workers unzipped the body bag, they found her chest moving as she gasped for air.

The funeral called 911 as well as the hospice center. When emergency services personnel arrived on the scene, they recorded her pulse and wrote down she had no eye movement or verbal, vocal or motor response.

The woman was transported back to the care facility, where she died surrounded by her loved ones on January 5, two days after the incident.

The resident, who is unidentified, had been at the center since December of 2021, and was moved into its hospice wing on December 28, 2022 due to “senile degeneration of the brain.” She had been initially diagnosed with early-onset dementia. While in hospice, staff members recorded occurrences of “diminished” lung sounds and minor seizures.

The center’s executive director released a statement to the media, adding she had been in close communication with the resident’s family and that an investigation by the Department of Inspections and Appeals had “just completed.”

Despite the incident, Lisa Eastman, the facility’s executive director, stated: “We care deeply for our residents and remain fully committed to supporting their end-of-life care. All employees undergo regular training so they can best support end-of-life care and the death of our residents.”