A Lockland couple says their 3-month-old daughter was given the wrong blood transfusion inside a Cincinnati NICU in May, and that nobody at the hospital told them it had happened until hours later at a different hospital. Damian and Allysa Gilbert say their twin daughter Emmie should have received Cal-positive blood but was instead administered 12 milliliters of O-negative blood while a patient in the neonatal intensive care unit.
The Gilberts, who have twin daughters named Winnie and Emmie, told FOX19 that a nurse administered an unscreened bag of O-negative blood to Emmie while she was being cared for in Good Samaritan Hospital's NICU. According to the parents, the error was discovered about an hour and a half after the transfusion began, at which point Good Samaritan staff performed an emergency stop and removed Emmie from the transfusion.
Per Allysa Gilbert's account, the O-negative blood was incompatible with Emmie's blood type and caused her body to attack her own blood, making her anemic. The twins were then emergency transported to the University of Cincinnati's NICU, but the Gilberts say they weren't informed of the transfer until after it had already happened — and only learned of the transfusion error itself several hours later, once they were at UC's NICU.
Parents Say They Were Kept in the Dark
The Gilberts say they were not told that Emmie's transfusion was taking place in the first place, and were not informed of the error at Good Samaritan when it was discovered. Allysa Gilbert says she wants answers about the incident and accountability for the doctor and nurse involved, and that she wants any future incidents at the hospital to be reported directly to parents. The couple says they have received no answers from the hospital in the three months since the incident.
Good Samaritan Hospital provided a statement addressing the allegations but said it cannot disclose information about specific patient events due to patient privacy laws. That stance is standard procedure under federal patient privacy protections, though it leaves open questions about whether any staff members were disciplined or whether internal policies were revised as a result of the incident.
Why Blood Type Mismatches Are So Dangerous for Newborns
Blood antigen mismatches beyond simple ABO typing, such as those involving the Kell system, can trigger severe immune reactions in infants — including maternal immune destruction or bone marrow suppression of a baby's red blood cells, resulting in severe anemia, according to research summarized on NCBI Bookshelf. Kell is considered the third most clinically significant blood group system after ABO and Rh, the same research notes.
Good Samaritan's NICU is a 60-bed Level III unit, described by TriHealth as the largest maternity NICU in the tri-state region, providing comprehensive care for critically ill newborns requiring advanced ventilation and high-acuity monitoring. The hospital also has a decades-long history with neonatal transfusion care in Cincinnati, having performed the region's first newborn exchange transfusion for blood factor incompatibility back in 1941, according to the Sisters of Charity of Cincinnati. Good Samaritan also works with Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center and the University of Cincinnati Medical Center through the Fetal Care Center of Cincinnati, a partnership that coordinates high-risk obstetrical and neonatal care and transfers across the region, per TriHealth.
Consent and Oversight Questions Remain Open
Under Ohio Revised Code Section 2317.54, medical providers are generally required to obtain written informed consent detailing procedure risks before non-emergency interventions, and administering a procedure without that consent can constitute legal battery under state law, according to Mellino Law. Written consent forms are standard in Ohio hospitals outside of immediate life-threatening emergencies, the firm notes — a detail directly relevant to the Gilberts' claim that they were never told the transfusion was happening.
Standard hospital bedside transfusion protocols call for an independent double-check by two licensed healthcare professionals verifying a patient's wristband, physician order, and blood bag label before any blood is administered, according to Nursing CE Central. That verification step is considered the final safety checkpoint before blood enters a patient's body. The Joint Commission and the National Quality Forum classify administering incompatible blood products as a “never event” and a sentinel event, requiring accredited hospitals to conduct an immediate root cause analysis, per NCBI-published guidance.
Because Ohio does not maintain a public mandatory reporting database for non-fatal hospital medical errors — unlike states such as Washington and Pennsylvania — and because FDA rules under 21 CFR 606.170 only require mandatory reporting to federal regulators for fatal transfusion complications, formal documentation of what happened inside Good Samaritan's NICU may not be publicly accessible. A 20-year retrospective study published in Transfusion and analyzed via PubMed found that while ABO-incompatible transfusion fatalities nationwide dropped to roughly two per year between 2010 and 2019, bedside administration errors — transfusing the wrong patient or wrong unit — remained among the leading causes of such incidents industry-wide.
For now, the Gilberts say they are still waiting for the hospital to explain what happened to their daughter and whether the doctor and nurse involved faced any consequences. Good Samaritan has not provided additional public detail beyond citing patient privacy laws, leaving the family's central questions about accountability unresolved.
