The parents of a 26-year-old dental student named Conor Hylton are suing a Connecticut hospital after their son died in its “telehealth” intensive care unit where no critical care doctors were actually present, they allege in the lawsuit.

According to the wrongful death complaint filed against Yale New Haven Health, the largest healthcare provider in the state, Hylton visited the emergency room at its Bridgeport Hospital Milford Campus because of abdominal pain and vomiting on the morning of August 14, 2024. When his condition worsened, he was admitted to the hospital ICU and diagnosed with pancreatitis, dehydration, metabolic acidosis, and alcohol withdrawal, per a medical analysis cited in the suit.

Rather than receiving traditional care, however, Hylton was unwittingly plunged into a cold experiment in using remote work to offset hospital staffing shortages, which could be a grim portent in an age of AI automation. During the late hours he was admitted to the ICU, there were no on-hand ICU intensivists — the term for doctors that specialize in providing critical care — the suit alleges. Instead, the wing outsourced this to a “tele-ICU” service, which relies on off-site intensivists.

No on-site physician assessed Hylton for hours, despite his rapidly deteriorating condition. A hospitalist — a doctor that provides general medical care for in-patients but doesn’t specialize in critical care — was assigned to Hylton, but allegedly never saw him.

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