A woman was pronounced dead at a New York nursing home Saturday morning, only to be discovered breathing nearly three hours later, police said.
The 82-year-old woman was pronounced dead at Water’s Edge Rehab and Nursing Center at Port Jefferson on Long Island at 11:15 a.m., Suffolk County police said. She was taken to O.B. Davis Funeral Home in Miller Place at 1:30 p.m.
Funeral home staff members saw the woman breathing at 2:09 p.m., police said, adding that she was taken to a hospital.
Police were not able to provide an update on the unidentified woman's condition.
Water’s Edge Rehab and Nursing Center and O.B. Davis Funeral Home did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The incident has been referred to New York Attorney General Letitia James' office.
"This is an awful situation that has caused unnecessary trauma for the impacted resident and her loved ones," a spokesperson for the attorney general's office said.
The spokesperson did not say whether the nursing home would be charged or fined.
The incident occurred a little more than a month after a 66-year-old woman at an Iowa hospice facility was mistakenly presumed dead.
The state's Department of Inspections and Appeals said a nurse at the facility checked on the woman at 6 a.m. Jan. 3 and found no signs of life. The resident was transferred to a funeral home, where staff members saw her "chest was moving and she was gasping for air," the department said in a report.
The woman was taken to the emergency room. She was returned to the hospice facility and died two days later, according to the report.
The state fined the facility $10,000, the maximum allowed under Iowa law.
