2nd stillborn's remains may have gone to laundry

Regions Hospital says it believes there was a second set of stillborn baby remains in a basket of linens sent to a laundry earlier this week.

On Wednesday Regions officials confirmed the body of a stillborn baby at the 22-week gestational age found at a Red Wing commercial laundry came from the hospital's morgue.

This afternoon Region's chief nursing officer Christine Boese said in a statement the hospital had checked its records and found there were other remains unaccounted for.

She says the linen basket probably also held the remains of a stillborn baby at 19 weeks gestational age.

"We have now ruled out that those remains went to the funeral home or to another location. A tragic human error was made and we believe both sets of remains were mistaken as empty linens and placed in the laundry at the same time by a hospital worker," Boese said.

Boese says Regions thought it had procedures in place to prevent such mistakes. She says the hospital takes full responsibility and has made changes to make sure a similar mistake isn't made again.

Boese says Regions has reviews all its records from last year and all other stillborn remains are accounted for.

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