CHICAGO _ The Illinois Department of Public Health is investigating a suburban Chicago hospital that waited two weeks before alerting authorities about a newborn who arrived in the emergency room on life support and accompanied by a woman who falsely claimed to be the mother.
The department would not disclose any details except to say that officials were at Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn on Tuesday afternoon.
The baby was brought to the hospital on the evening of April 23 with a woman who said she had given birth at her Southwest Side home. But an examination done soon afterward found no evidence of that.
Even so, the hospital did not notify the state Department of Children and Family Services until May 9, two days after police contacted the hospital about the case.
In the next week, police would determine the woman at the hospital had strangled 19-year-old Marlen Ochoa-Lopez and cut a baby boy from her womb. The woman, her boyfriend and her daughter have been charged.
State law requires doctors, nurses and others who work at hospitals to report to DCFS suspected child abuse or neglect. Doctors who "willfully" fail to report can face consequences from the Illinois State Medical Disciplinary Board while other mandated reporters can be charged with a misdemeanor.
The health department's investigation comes a day after the Cook County sheriff's office raised questions about whether the hospital should have notified DCFS sooner.
"We will ask DCFS to advise if this unspeakably tragic set of facts was reportable by a mandated reporter," Cara Smith, chief policy officer for the sheriff's office, said in a statement Monday evening. "If they determine it was, we will ensure it is immediately investigated."
DCFS confirmed it is working with the sheriff's office "to determine whether mandated reporting laws were followed," agency spokesman Jassen Strokosch said in a statement.
Experts in the field have also questioned the actions of the hospital, which so far has refused to comment, citing patient privacy. Some say this is a case where the hospital clearly should have called child protective services immediately.
"This child is at risk of being abused or neglected if he or she is in the possession of someone who is making misrepresentations about their relationship to the child," said Kent Dean, an attorney in Oak Park who typically represents parents under investigation by DCFS. "That should have been an automatic call."
Dean said that as a psychiatric worker in a hospital years ago, he called child protective services several times to report possible abuse or neglect. He called the hospital's failure to immediately report the situation "baffling."
Others, however, say it may not have seemed as clear-cut to the hospital.
"It's a tricky one, actually," said Diane Redleaf, founder and former executive director of the Family Defense Center. "The fact that she wasn't really the mother makes the child a dependent child, but not necessarily an abused or a neglected child."
Still, she said, the question of whether the hospital was legally required to call authorities is different from the question of whether calling authorities would have been the right thing to do.
"It is very strange and troubling that they didn't do it," she said in an email.
Ochoa-Lopez was expecting her second child, due in a matter of weeks, when she logged into a moms group on Facebook and made contact with a woman who would later be charged with killing her. In a post on April 22, the teen said she needed a double stroller and some baby clothes.
She got an answer from Clarisa Figueroa, 46, who asked Ochoa-Lopez to come to her home the next day. Police and prosecutors said Figueroa and her daughter, Desiree Figueroa, strangled the teen and the elder Figueroa cut the near-full-term baby from her body.
The baby had problems breathing, and the elder Figueroa called 911. Paramedics took her and the baby to Christ Medical Center, where the boy was placed on life support and Figueroa was examined after claiming to be the mother.
"While at the labor and delivery section at Christ, (Figueroa) was examined but showed no signs consistent with a woman who had just delivered a baby," prosecutors said last week in charging Figueroa, her daughter and the elder woman's boyfriend.
Figueroa "did have blood on her arms, hands and across her face, which was from the murder of (Ochoa-Lopez) and the removal of (her) baby," they added. "The blood was cleaned off by an OB technician."
It's unclear whether Figueroa was allowed to visit the baby in intensive care in the following days. According to prosecutors, Figueroa created a GoFundMe page asking for donations for the baby and featuring a picture of the boy hooked up to a breathing tube and monitors. The page eventually was taken down, but it's not known when.
A spokesman for the hospital declined to comment on why the hospital waited to contact authorities, citing "patient privacy" and referring questions to local law enforcement, saying "this is an ongoing police matter."
The hospital did not contact state child welfare officials until more than two weeks later, on May 9, days after police showed up at Christ asking about the baby, according to police and DCFS. Chicago police say they never heard from the hospital either and only went there May 7 after getting a tip about the baby, who remained in the intensive care unit hooked up to life support.
Once DCFS was contacted, the boy was placed into protective state custody, according to DCFS' Strokosch. Custody eventually turned over May 13 to the boy's father, 20-year-old Yovani Lopez, who was married to Marlen Ochoa-Lopez and also is the father of their 3-year-old son.
Chicago police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said the department was not conducting its own investigation into why the hospital did not alert authorities sooner, in part because the hospital is not within its jurisdiction. But he said the department will cooperate with the sheriff's inquiry.
Though every hospital has its own procedures, hospitals typically notify police when there is suspected criminal activity or allegations of child abuse or neglect, Guglielmi said.
"This was such a barbaric tragedy," he said. "Every single government agency has the responsibility to take a critical look at itself."
