Preventable deaths at N.J. psychiatric hospital spark anger: 'It's a babysitting service with pills'
Before he died at 29, Michael Vecchio of Hanover spent the last three months of his life in hospitals.
He didn’t have a terminal illness. He had schizophrenia. And had he not been at Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital in Parsippany for most of that time, his mother believes he would still be alive.
Privacy laws prevented Beth Vecchio from knowing her son had stopped eating weeks earlier until an ambulance rushed him, writhing in pain, to Morristown Medical Center. He died the following day, on Jan. 25, 2017 after his impacted colon ruptured and he developed sepsis, according to hospital records.
“How dare they use the word ‘hospital’ in their name. They let him starve for at least 30 days,” said Beth Vecchio, Michael’s mother. “It’s a baby-sitting service with pills.”
Read more: https://www.nj.com/news/2019/08/preventable-deaths-at-nj-psychiatric-hospital-spark-anger-its-a-babysitting-service-with-pills.html