Father Sues Hospital After Son, 26, Dies While ICU Care Was Directed by a Doctor on a Screen

A grieving father is taking legal action after he says his son’s ICU care was directed by a physician who never entered the room.

Conor James Hylton of New Haven, Connecticut, died on August 15, 2024, at the Milford Campus of Bridgeport Hospital, according to a Daily Mail report published Thursday, July 16. Now, the deceased 26-year-old’s father, William H. Hylton, filed a lawsuit against the hospital, alleging his son’s care in his final hours was overseen remotely by a physician stationed 12 miles away at Yale New Haven Health’s tele-clinic rather than by Dr. Denu, the hospitalist on duty that night, who later said ICU patients were managed by tele-physicians.

William and his wife, Betsy, rushed to the ICU roughly an hour before their son died and say they witnessed nurses working to save Conor’s life while a doctor issued directions from a screen, according to the lawsuit cited by the outlet.

“We saw the whole thing go down,” William said, according to the article. “We saw the guy on the TV screen running the whole thing remotely, telling the nurses and everyone else what to do. And you know, at first, it doesn’t maybe hit you, but then you start thinking, so this guy on the TV is really running the show here.”

The suit alleges Conor’s death was “a direct result of the negligence of Bridgeport Hospital, Yale New Haven Hospital Inc.,” per the report, and claims the medical team failed to communicate effectively during the emergency — a breakdown the filing says was worsened by the remote setup.

Yale New Haven Health said in a statement, according to the Daily Mail, that it “is aware of this lawsuit and is committed to providing the safest and highest quality of care possible; however, we are unable to comment on pending litigation.”

Per the report, Conor first arrived at the hospital on August 14 after a day of vomiting, presenting with low blood pressure and signs of heart rhythm trouble. He was diagnosed with complications related to alcohol withdrawal, including dehydration, pancreatitis and metabolic acidosis. His parents left that evening believing he was stable, but his condition deteriorated overnight — he became unresponsive with seizure-like activity around 4:30 a.m., began vomiting blood, and was pronounced dead just after 6 a.m.

The filing claims the resuscitation effort and pronouncement of death were “erroneously attributed to Dr. Denu in the medical record, but in reality, Dr. Denu did nothing and the pronouncement was done by a ‘tele-health’ provider on a video screen,” the outlet reported. She is not named as a defendant in the lawsuit.

“You can’t delegate the responsibility for intensive care to somebody on a screen,” family attorney Joel Faxon said, per the report. “I mean, it’s called intensive care for a reason. And this is why I say this is a fake ICU.”

Conor, the son of two dentists, was a student at the UConn School of Dental Medicine and had played Irish football at the New Haven Gaelic Football Club and earned a black belt in Taekwondo, per his obituary. Becoming a dentist was described as his “life long dream.”

His father’s lawsuit is seeking economic and emotional damages.