SF Health Giant Accused of Letting Bodies Decompose

Medical nonprofit Dignity Health, headquartered at 185 Berry Street in San Francisco, and its parent company, CommonSpirit Health, talk a lot about “humankindness.” The portmanteau has been a fixture of their advertising since 2013. In one commercial, a pair of mental health workers discuss bringing clothes from home to provide for patients caught without.

However, Mercy San Juan Medical Center in Carmichael, California, and Mercy General Hospital in Sacramento, both owned and operated by Dignity Health, received disciplinary actions from federal and California state officials in 2022, 2023, and 2024 for mishandling the remains of deceased patients. In one documented case, the family of a patient that died of cardiac arrest had not been notified about the event for six weeks thereafter.

The notice from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services dated 4 October 2024 stated that “[Mercy San Juan] failed to ensure [that] the services of the Regional Morgue Office complied with regulations and facility policies and procedures related to family notification of patient death, timely completion of death certificates, and processing of patient remains…These failures contributed to ongoing delays in processing death certificates, lack of family notification of patient deaths, and prolonged storage of patient bodies in an off-site morgue,which had the potential to result in family distress over the perception of patients missing for prolonged periods of time when in fact they were deceased and in storage.”

The document also noted that the off-site morgue used by Mercy San Juan had 61 patient remains from the hospital, 11 patient remains from deaths in 2022, 15 patient remains from deaths in 2023, and 19 patient remains from deaths in the first half of 2024.

Both CommonSpirit Health and Dignity Health along with Mercy San Juan Medical Center, Mercy General Hospital and Mortuary Support Services of Northern California are also named as defendants in four lawsuits due to the negligent and in some cases, deceptive ways deceased patients’ remains have been handled.

After 39-year-old Michael Gray was admitted to Mercy San Juan Medical Center for an accidental overdose in July 2021, hospital records strangely indicated that he had been treated and released, despite the fact that he had, in fact, died. His body was placed into offsite storage where it was neither autopsied nor preserved, and Gray's mother was not notified of his death until a little over a month afterward.

On 6 April 2023, Jessie Marie Peterson, 31, was admitted to Mercy San Juan Medical Center for a diabetic episode. Though her medical records indicated that she had been discharged against doctor’s orders two days later, in fact, on that day she died of cardiopulmonary arrest as a complication of her lifelong diabetes and was transferred to cold storage at a facility owned by Mortuary Support Services of Northern California but neither autopsied nor embalmed. Unfortunately, her family was not notified of her death until over a year later, and during that time lapse, had filed a missing person’s report. By the time the truth was revealed, her remains were too decomposed to be given an open casket funeral.

On 2 November 2023, 51-year-old Tonya Walker was admitted to Mercy General Hospital in Sacramento for cardiac arrest, and died. However, the hospital failed to issue a death certificate until 15 April 2024. In the interim, her family was not notified of her whereabouts and had filed a missing person's report. By the time the truth had been revealed, Tonya Walker’s remains were so badly decomposed, she could only be identified by a tattoo on her arm.

"Her body was in the worst condition you can imagine,” said her younger sister, Dalee Marez. “[It] looked like someone put battery acid all on her face.”

Most recently, in January 2026, the family of Charles Wesley Harvey, a decorated Navy veteran who served in Vietnam and received the National Defense Service Medal, filed a lawsuit against Dignity Health, CommonSpirit Health and Mortuary Support Services of Northern California. In the suit, the family declares that although Charles Harvey died at Mercy San Juan Medical Center on 2 June 2022, aged 67, they were kept in the dark until 1 December 2025 while his remains rotted in cold storage.

Despite these egregious and tragic developments, Dignity Health has issued a statement to Sacramento NBC TV affiliate KCRA in late 2025, declaring, "Our goal is to provide the best care and support possible for patients and their families.” Dignity Health has also claimed numerous times in court documents that the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting quarantine impeded the process of obtaining and issuing death certificates, creating a backlog of deceased patients being held in the morgue. Nevertheless, Nancy Louks, Charles Harvey's younger sister angrily stated that Dignity Health’s actions, or more accurately, lack thereof are “inexcusable.”

“There's no dignity in this,” said Charles Harvey's son, Jacob. “I don't even know how they can use that name.”

This track record may leave Californians scratching their heads and wondering what is amiss at CommonSpirit. According to Becker’s Hospital Review, the system is America’s third largest.

However, biggest does not mean best—just bigger bills for what, in these cases at least, is alleged to have been very poor care.

Scholars from the University of California College of the Law, San Francisco, Catalyst for Payment Reform, University of Southern California, and University of California, Berkeley found that hospital consolidation has led to increased prices above the rate of inflation. Further, they concluded that as hospital systems increase their geographic footprint, the rates they charge increase significantly. The Petris Center at UC Berkeley writes that “Prices for the same health care services vary widely by California region, and that variation is associated with the level of consolidation of health care markets in each region.” Petris has been especially critical of hospital system consolidation and oligopolist behavior in California, including in litigation brought against another California giant, Sutter Health, by former Attorney General Xavier Becerra. Becerra is now running for governor and his wife sits on the board of CommonSpirit.