Hospitals accused of hiding deaths, storing bodies for months, and not telling families

Hospitals accused of hiding deaths, storing bodies for months, and not telling families 
Nurse.org; by Brandy Pinkerton, RN; 7/25/25 
Families in the Sacramento area say they spent months, and in some cases years, desperately searching for loved ones who had vanished—only to discover that their remains had been left to decompose, unidentified and forgotten, in an off-site morgue operated by Dignity Health hospitals. Now, a series of lawsuits and regulatory audits allege that one of California’s largest healthcare systems demonstrated “callous, reckless, and outrageous failure” by neglecting to notify families of patient deaths, withholding death certificates, and consigning bodies to languish in storage, compounding the anguish of those left behind.