I’ve never seen a dead person be wheeled out of a hospital in my life. How do they sneak them out without the carnival of spectators?
In: Other
Cadavers are usually taken straight to a mortuary inside the hospital. This then usually has a dedicated entrance away from public areas used by morticians and funeral directors who’ll pick the bodies up in “private ambulances”.
Elevators have special keys that lock the doors so no one can get on them while a body is being transported up and down. We didn’t even use our hospital morgue unless we knew there was going on be a long wait until pickup. We threw a fan on the body and within an hour the funeral home would be pick them up. We’d wheel them out one of the back/underground doors in the basement.
Did you think they would just wheel a cadaver out on a gurney through the main entrance?
Hospitals are big. They have multiple entrances including cargo zones where people other than hospital staff generally aren’t.
Bodies will generally get loaded into non-descript vehicles and taken to wherever the family requests (e.g, certain funeral home).
Don’t know if every hospital works the same but when my mother died I had to go to the hospital’s morgue to recognize the body before delivery to the funeral home, and it was in another wing far from the main hall
I’ve done exactly this for three decades. We usually go out the loading dock, then into an unmarked white minivan.
I used to do “pick ups” when I worked for a funeral home. That included picking up bodies from hospitals. We used a standard minivan with no 2nd or third row and we’d back up to a loading dock area. We’d take our stretcher and either go to the hospital morgue or we’d wait for the body to be brought to the hallway just inside the loading dock doors. The body would be inside a black body bag so nobody could see anything. We’d load the stretcher into the van and drive back to the funeral home. We’d back into the garage so we could unload in private. The garage had an extra wide door leading to both the embalming room and cold storage room so the body could be placed appropriately.
I picked up bodies for 5 years for a dozen of my local funeral homes, we used basement halls or mainly employee used halls and elevators to docks or specific doors. All bodies had to be signed out by security, the charge nurse on duty and the funeral home representative.
I reckon they have a different exit, but they won’t let us out that way because its a dead end. 😋
[removed]
I work in a hospital morgue! Our morgue actually moved offsite from the hospital. We contract a removal service who use a covered, boxy looking gurney so it isn’t as obvious what they’re moving, and they leave in a van via the loading dock in back. Then they’re transported across the street to our morgue, where we have a private garage entrance.
Latest Answers