Hospital Being Investigated Over Dead Baby Found in Trash Can

California medical licensing authorities on Thursday launched an investigation of the Oxnard hospital where a 15-year-old girl gave birth to a premature daughter Monday whose body was later found in a restroom trash can near the emergency room.

The California Department of Health Services began its investigation of St. John’s Regional Medical Center on Thursday and will release its conclusion next week, said Lana Pimbley, a department official.

No allegations of impropriety have been made against the hospital staff, but officials want to know precisely what happened.

If investigators find the Oxnard hospital’s staff did nothing improper, the department’s licensing and certification division will simply place a memo to that effect in St. John’s file, said Pimbley, who is district administrator for that division in Ventura County.

But if investigators find the hospital or its staff violated California laws governing hospitals, the state could impose penalties ranging from a written reprimand to the forced closing of the hospital, Pimbley said.

“There’s all kinds of actions we could take,” she said. “If there’s a severe enough deficiency, we could shut the doors.”

The probe was launched because “it’s an unusual situation,” Pimbley said.

“It’s out of the ordinary, where they found it and who found it,” she said. A custodian found the 3-pound, 9-ounce baby girl’s body Tuesday inside a plastic bag at the bottom of a small trash can in a restroom near the Oxnard hospital’s emergency room--more than 24 hours after the newborn died of asphyxiation, according to police.

Trish Bartel, a hospital spokeswoman, said hospital administrators are not worried by the state investigation.

She said it is not uncommon for state regulators to make on-site investigations of extraordinary events at hospitals. “Any time there’s an unusual occurrence, and this is definitely an unusual occurrence, they come down.”

Meanwhile, Oxnard police are continuing their investigation of the baby’s death and may not report to the district attorney’s office until next week, said Sgt. Denny Phillips. He declined to talk further about the investigation.

Pimbley, too, declined to reveal what the state health department is investigating.

But in any department probe, she said, “we go in and investigate what we need to, we interview who we need to, and we pull whatever records we need to.”

Police said the unidentified girl’s mother had brought her to the hospital at 4:45 a.m. Monday after she complained of numbness in her leg.

After emergency room staff took her pulse and blood pressure, the girl excused herself and went to a restroom, where she delivered the baby, police said. She later told police that she thought the baby was dead and put it in a plastic bag.

She then emerged and complained of abdominal pain to doctors, who admitted her for observation, said Rita Schumacher, another hospital spokeswoman.

At some point Monday afternoon, the girl passed the placenta in her hospital room. Doctors immediately notified police and the county coroner’s office to begin looking for an abandoned baby, Schumacher said.

Schumacher said the placenta typically passes within an hour after a baby’s birth.

Asked whether hospital staff searched the building for the baby, Schumacher declined to comment.

Hospital officials said both the girl and her mother told emergency room doctors that she was not pregnant. They said physicians believed the girl when she told them that the blood on her was from her menstrual period.

An official at another hospital said it is sometimes difficult to tell if an emergency room patient is lying. “Pretty much you have to take patients at face value,” said Dr. Nat Baumer, director of the emergency room at Ventura County Medical Center. “Doctors and nurses in busy waiting rooms don’t have time to play Sherlock Holmes.”

The girl was released from the hospital Tuesday morning because she appeared healthy, Schumacher said.

But the baby was not found until Tuesday night when a custodian went to empty the trash, Schumacher said.

The baby was born seven or eight months into the pregnancy and had breathed for a short time before dying of asphyxiation, reported Dr. Ronald O’Halloran, the assistant Ventura County coroner. He did not say what caused the baby to suffocate.

Police said the baby could have survived if she had been taken to doctors immediately after birth.

Assistant Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. Kevin J. McGee said his office will decide after reviewing the police report whether to file charges against the teen-age mother. Charges could range from child endangerment to murder.