State records revealed that a central New York hospital in 2009 nearly took organs from a woman despite signs that she was still alive.

The Syracuse Post-Standard reported Sunday that the doctors were shocked when the 41-year old patient Colleen Burns opened her eyes when the doctors were almost about to begin the surgery. The doctors taught she already died of drug overdose in which her family gave permission for them to take her organs as donation.

Nobody knew about the incident until the newspaper got hold of the document which details all the lapses of the doctors. The nurses already informed them that the patient was still breathing but the doctors ignored them. They just canceled the surgery when the patient woke up.

The patient was released from the hospital after three weeks. However, she committed suicide 16 months later. Her daughter clarified that her suicide wasn’t related to the hospital incident. The family didn’t file any complaint against the hospital despite that they couldn’t explain why they decided to continue the surgery even if she was still alive.

The hospital was fined $6,000 by the state health department when they found out about the incident.

"The hospital did not undertake an intensive and critical review of the near-catastrophic event in this case," the federal agency said, and did not "identify the inadequate physician evaluations of (Burns) that occurred when nursing staff questioned possible signs of improving neurological function."

The state department reported that the hospital failed to do proper evaluation by assuming that the patient was already dead even if she was just on a coma. The hospital did not also perform a procedure to stop the drugs from reaching the patient’s organs, didn’t do drug test and brain scans, and ignored the nurses’ observation.

The hospital promised to give trainings to their medical staffs to teach them how to properly evaluate brain death. They will also revisit their quality assurance program.