Joseph Francis ONeill

Joseph Francis O’Neill was a 79-year-old man from West Islip, New York, and on September 21, 1987, he entered the Good Samaritan Hospital in West Islip for what appeared to be an ordinary medical crisis. He was dealing with gastrointestinal problems severe enough that staff placed him in the hospital’s intensive and cardiac care unit. By the end of that same night, he was dead—another sudden loss in a place built to keep people alive.

At the time, the cardiac ward’s alarms and ru ...