NC Hospital Faces Heat After Man Ignored 22 Hours Dies

Federal authorities are threatening to cut funding for a North Carolina hospital where a psychiatric patient died after being ignored for 22 hours, the AP reports. It’s still not clear what killed the 50-year-old, who at one point choked on medication, but surveillance video shows him sitting unattended while staff played cards and watched television just feet away.

The man was left in a chair for 22 hours; workers neither fed him nor helped him to the bathroom. The state has sent a team to Cherry Hospital in Goldsboro to help draft new patient care procedures, and perhaps suggest disciplinary action. It’s the second disturbing incident at the hospital—there’s also been a report of a doctor punching a teenage patient who bit him. (More hospital stories.)