NY TIMES: The Mysterious Patient in Room 23: The Hermit Baroness Birgit Thyssen-Bornemisza led a life of eccentric anonymity and shabby gentility. Then her money got cut off. Then she had a stroke. …More
NY TIMES: The Mysterious Patient in Room 23: The Hermit Baroness
Birgit Thyssen-Bornemisza led a life of eccentric anonymity and shabby gentility. Then her money got cut off. Then she had a stroke.
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The Mysterious Patient in Room 23: The Hermit Baroness
She arrived at Mount Sinai West’s emergency room with slurred speech and no identification. Paramedics had found the woman on the floor in a luxury apartment building on Central Park South, disoriented, apparently experiencing a stroke.
She was one of thousands of people who are brought to New York hospitals each year, identified only as “unknown.”
By all appearances, she was just another Jane Doe the hospital was required to take in — needing care that would probably take about a week. But in the next day or two, a family lawyer, following a tip from the manager of the woman’s building, identified the “unknown.” She was the Baroness Birgit Thyssen-Bornemisza, 80 years old, from one of Europe’s wealthiest families, with businesses in banking, steel and other industries, and one of the world’s premier private art collections.
But beyond that, the patient in Room 23 was a mystery. She had no Social Security number, no insurance, no identifiable source of income, no immediate relatives. If she had any friends or a bank account, the lawyer did not know of them. Google her name: no information.
How could a woman from such an illustrious family, living in the heart of New York City, leave so few traces of her existence?
Since April 4, she has remained in her hospital bed, tethered to a feeding tube, with an unpaid bill that has long since passed $600,000. She spends her days largely unheeded, visited by a longtime home attendant who brings her flowers. For hospital administrators, she is a problem, occupying an acute care bed she does not need, with no money coming in and no way to discharge her safely. In June, the hospital petitioned to have her placed into guardianship, in part so someone else could take responsibility for her care.
She had spent decades working to be invisible, to avoid ties to institutions, public or private. Now it was catching up to her.
Her monthslong hospital stay, with no rehabilitative treatment, was a confounding case, said Elisabeth Benjamin, vice president for health initiatives at the Community Service Society of New York.
“Health care bureaucracy hits legal bureaucracy,” she said. “And the victim of that is this woman.”
A baroness is born.
Birgit Thyssen-Bornemisza led a life of eccentric anonymity and shabby gentility. Then her money got cut off. Then she had a stroke.
Listen to This Article
The Mysterious Patient in Room 23: The Hermit Baroness
She arrived at Mount Sinai West’s emergency room with slurred speech and no identification. Paramedics had found the woman on the floor in a luxury apartment building on Central Park South, disoriented, apparently experiencing a stroke.
She was one of thousands of people who are brought to New York hospitals each year, identified only as “unknown.”
By all appearances, she was just another Jane Doe the hospital was required to take in — needing care that would probably take about a week. But in the next day or two, a family lawyer, following a tip from the manager of the woman’s building, identified the “unknown.” She was the Baroness Birgit Thyssen-Bornemisza, 80 years old, from one of Europe’s wealthiest families, with businesses in banking, steel and other industries, and one of the world’s premier private art collections.
But beyond that, the patient in Room 23 was a mystery. She had no Social Security number, no insurance, no identifiable source of income, no immediate relatives. If she had any friends or a bank account, the lawyer did not know of them. Google her name: no information.
How could a woman from such an illustrious family, living in the heart of New York City, leave so few traces of her existence?
Since April 4, she has remained in her hospital bed, tethered to a feeding tube, with an unpaid bill that has long since passed $600,000. She spends her days largely unheeded, visited by a longtime home attendant who brings her flowers. For hospital administrators, she is a problem, occupying an acute care bed she does not need, with no money coming in and no way to discharge her safely. In June, the hospital petitioned to have her placed into guardianship, in part so someone else could take responsibility for her care.
She had spent decades working to be invisible, to avoid ties to institutions, public or private. Now it was catching up to her.
Her monthslong hospital stay, with no rehabilitative treatment, was a confounding case, said Elisabeth Benjamin, vice president for health initiatives at the Community Service Society of New York.
“Health care bureaucracy hits legal bureaucracy,” she said. “And the victim of that is this woman.”
A baroness is born.
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