A Newark family wants to know how Newark Beth Israel Medical Center managed to lose track of their loved one for 10 hours, insisting that she was not in their hospital even as its doctors performed emergency medical procedures on the unconscious woman.

Geovanni Molina says his mother, Grisela Benitez, was rushed to the hospital at 9 a.m. last Monday after she had difficulty breathing. Paramedics said she appeared to have suffered a severe allergic reaction. That's when something went wrong. For the next 10 hours, despite repeated phone calls and personal visits, the family says Newark Beth Israel first insisted Benitez had never arrived at the hospital, then said she had been there briefly, but had been discharged by a doctor. All along, the woman was in the hospital being intubated and given emergency treatment. 

Molina says he and his father spent hours checking other area hospitals and frantically driving the streets of Newark looking for any sign of his mother. He admits that at one point "I actually walked around the pond at Weequahic Park just to see if she was perhaps floating."

Finally, at 7 p.m.,10 hours after Benitez had been rushed to the hospital by ambulance, Molina says he paid Newark Beth Israel Medical Center one more visit, and this time an emergency room nurse told him his mother was "in the operating recovery room." Molina wants to know how the hospital could have lost track of his mother for that long. "I don't blame the doctors and nurses for taking care of my mom," he says, "but they put us through an ordeal, when my mom was there the whole time."

Patricia Mitrano, a spokesperson for Newark Beth Israel Medical Center, tells Kane In Your Corner that she cannot comment on Benitez' case because of federal patient privacy rules, but says "when a patient presents in the Emergency Department at Newark Beth Israel Medical Center, the first concern of the entire staff is always to address the emergency needs of the patient and ensure patient safety."

The hospital did send Molina a vague letter of apology from its director of patient experience, Patrick T. Swift. Swift wrote: "Please allow me to say again how very sorry I am that you and your family had the experience that you did." Swift says that "in reviewing the case, opportunities for improved communication and sensitivity were identified."

To Molina, the letter is not enough. "I want to know where the glitch occurred," he says. "I want to know that this will never happen again."

In terms of patient care, Kane In Your Corner found Newark Beth Israel Medical Center ranks about average. The hospital received a rating of two out of five stars in a patient survey by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. That is approximately the same as nearby hospitals and close to the average statewide rating.