Atlanta

Funeral home: Hospital's mistake is keeping woman's husband from being cremated

ATLANTA — Three months after her husband died, his widow says she is still waiting for him to be cremated, all because of an apparent mistake at WellStar Atlanta Medical Center.

Sandra Rumph, of Atlanta, said her husband asked her to do just one thing after he died -- scatter his ashes off the Florida coast.

Three months after his death, she still can’t do it.

"Every day I cry. I can't stop crying. I go to bed, I cry. I wake up, I'm crying," Rumph 
said.

Rumph said her husband's body still lies in an Orlando funeral home waiting for cremation and
she said Wellstar Atlanta Medical Center, the hospital where he died, is to blame.


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“Now he’s just sitting there at the funeral home since Nov. 18,” Rumph told Channel 2’s Justin Wilfon.

The Fulton County Medical Examiner confirmed that a hospital mistake led to Rumph’s situation.

Because her husband died of complications from being shot nearly 30 years ago, the ME said an Atlanta Medical Center doctor should not have signed his death certificate.

“Doctors outside of the medical examiner’s office can sign death certificate as natural. If it’s anything other than natural the doctor’s here at the medical examiner’s office have to sign that,” Rumph said.

Until the funeral home gets a corrected death certificate, Rumph’s husband cannot be cremated.

In a statement, a hospital spokesperson told Wilfon, “In signing the death certificate, we abided by Georgia law.”

But the Fulton County Medical Examiner said the hospital clearly did not.

“I can understand the doctor not signing it properly because of a lack of knowledge," Rumph said.

The ME plans to send a new death certificate to Florida any day now. For Rumph, it can’t get there soon enough.

“Nothing can bring him back, but at least let him rest. My God, let him rest,” Rumph told Wilfon.

The hospital said it regrets any pain this process has caused the family.