Man whose wife died outside hospital gets apology from CEO

BOSTON (AP) — A Massachusetts man whose wife collapsed and died outside a locked hospital emergency room door has received a face-to-face apology from the chief executive of the hospital’s parent company.

Patrick Wardell, CEO of Cambridge Health Alliance, told Peter DeMarco during a two-hour meeting on Tuesday that he was “very sorry” for what happened.

DeMarco accepted the apology but said he was not satisfied with all the answers he received from hospital officials.

DeMarco’s heart-wrenching first-person account of the death of his wife, Laura Levis, appeared in The Boston Globe magazine.

Levis, having an asthma attack, walked to Somerville Hospital’s emergency room in the early morning hours of Sept. 16, 2016, and called 911, but after finding the doors locked, died on a bench 29 feet from the main entrance.