A New Jersey NBC affiliate reported on a shocking turn of events where a deceased infant was cremated accidentally.A hospital representative from Shore Memorial hospital …

deeply regretted the highly unusual error, which was the result of a miscommunication between the hospital, the medical examiners office and the funeral home. The representative said it stemmed from one of the babies being registered inconsistently at the morgue and in the hospital’s admissions database.

The real travesty is that this isn’t the worst part of the story. You see, the death of this baby was a part of an investigation into a murder, as it had been left in a dumpster by the mother. While an autopsy had already been done its possible that the case will have to be dropped because the defense cannot challenge the results.

The representative said the hospital is reviewing its internal policies and procedures and taking steps to prevent this from happening again.

Let’s hope so. It is terrible that bad information quality and systems integration can have such a devastating result.