{"id":591123,"date":"2026-09-05T16:08:12","date_gmt":"2026-09-05T16:08:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/591123\/"},"modified":"2026-09-05T16:08:12","modified_gmt":"2026-09-05T16:08:12","slug":"second-patient-in-two-months-found-dead-in-waikato-hospital-toilet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/591123\/","title":{"rendered":"Second patient in two months found dead in Waikato Hospital toilet"},"content":{"rendered":"

Health New Zealand said the patient died in the bathroom on a surgical ward in mid-August.<\/p>\n

Spokesman for the Waikato district, Dr Gary Hopgood, said the ward was fully staffed at the time.<\/p>\n

“Whenever an unexpected death occurs in hospital, a review is initiated to establish the circumstances, and this event has triggered such a review. We are not able to provide further details ahead of the completion of that process.”<\/p>\n

Hopgood said Health New Zealand’s deepest sympathies are with the patient’s family.<\/p>\n

Police said the death is not being treated as suspicious and has been referred to the Coroner.<\/p>\n

At the end of June, a woman and her daughter tried unsuccessfully to save the life of a man who was found unconscious<\/a> in an emergency department toilet at Waikato Hospital.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Health New Zealand said the patient died in the bathroom on a surgical ward in mid-August. Spokesman for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":591124,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[138,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-591123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=591123"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591123\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/591124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=591123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=591123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=591123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}