• Mood: curious

Question About Hospital Procedure

For a fic I'm writing, a John Doe from a foreign country is admitted to a hospital by a good Samaritan (no relation to the patient) and eventually dies from illness without leaving any ID or indication of relatives to contact. I was wondering how the hospital/morgue dealt with such cases - are they kept for a certain length of time, does someone try to identify them, or are they moved more quickly than regular patients' bodies (who have family/friends/relatives to claim them) to the morgue?

Furthermore, later on, the CDC needs to examine his body in some possible epidemic case of theirs. How easy/difficult would it be for them to obtain it after...say...two weeks or so had passed? Any state health department hoops they've got to jump through?

Thanks in advance.

Edit: It's Orlando Medical Center, to be specific. Present day. I imagine there has to be a universal state or federal policy concerning this.

Edit 2: Thank you, slashfairy, for that very detailed and very helpful description ^_^. It's exactly what I needed.