A Brazilian family is suing after a critically ill woman allegedly died without receiving an ICU bed because a hospital algorithm repeatedly ranked her too low for emergency treatment. Her relatives claim doctors pushed for a transfer, only for an automated system to override their assessment time and again. The case has sparked alarm over whether AI-powered tools are being allowed to make life-and-death decisions once left to medical professionals.
Artificial intelligence is quietly reshaping global healthcare, but the death of Rebeca Cardoso Tenente Molina highlights concerns that software can influence a patient's chances of survival without ever making a medical diagnosis. Reporting by Brazilian outlet MG1 revealed that the 32-year-old psychologist died following a five-day delay in being moved to intensive care, a holdup allegedly driven by a state-managed algorithm used to ration hospital beds.
Fatal Five-Day Emergency Delay
Speaking to MG1, relatives recounted how the algorithm allegedly stalled the critical treatment needed to save her life.
The psychologist was initially admitted to a small hospital in São João Nepomuceno with complications from gallstones. However, as her condition deteriorated, she was left waiting for a vacancy at an intensive care unit roughly 186 miles away in Oliveira.
Even after the family resorted to urgent legal measures to force the transfer, the move was significantly delayed. According to MG1, relatives are now convinced that the five-day wait ultimately cost the patient her life.
Flawed Patient Priority Score
The patient's twin sister and family lawyer, Sâmela Cardoso Tenente Furtado, said the automated management system generated a health rating that failed to reflect her true condition.
The digital score, produced by AI tools within Brazil's State Regulation Operations Center (Core-MG), allegedly became the barrier between the patient and an immediate intensive care bed.
'What we saw was that doctors lost the autonomy to decide if a patient is very seriously ill,' Furtado told MG1.
'The one who has to accept whether a patient is seriously ill is no longer the doctor who is there experiencing that reality with the patient, it's the Core.'
Furtado described what she characterised as a rigid system that locked her sister into a fixed category despite medical evidence suggesting her condition was rapidly worsening.
Trapped by Inflexible Algorithms
'She would have been a 10, and the system only accepted her as a 6.8,' Furtado continued.
'So she couldn't progress properly in the system because a patient at 8, a patient at 6.9 would jump ahead of her. And the system wouldn't accept increasing her severity level within the system because of the tests that were constantly feeding it data.'
Molina's sister also spoke about the human cost of reducing patients to data points.
'My sister, other people, are not just numbers, they are not just protocols, they are not just a CPF [Brazilian tax ID number] thrown into the system,' she told MG1.
'They have families, they had dreams, they had a whole life ahead of them.'
Official Defence of Core-MG
Following the launch of the automated system on 19 May, Minas Gerais Deputy Secretary of Health Poliana Cardoso Lopes defended the technology in a public statement.
She explained: 'Core provides a bed map that is updated three times a day. With this, it will be possible to have much more control over the process and generate better data on the clinical condition and needs of each person waiting for a bed.'
Family Demands Legal Accountability
When questioned by MG1 about the tragedy, the state health department maintained that transfers rely strictly on finding a vacancy that matches a patient's medical requirements.
Officials also insisted that Core-MG has introduced no fundamental changes to the way patients are transferred between healthcare facilities.
