Health Officials Will Not Investigate Beyonce's Baby Delivery
While the birth of Blue Ivy Carter was "heaven" for Beyonce and Jay-Z, other new parents at New York's Lenox Hill Hospital have said it was the polar opposite for them. But state health officials determined today that Lenox Hill did nothing wrong.
"Staff spoke with the hospital [and] determined there were no violations," Michael Moran, a representative for the New York State Health Department, said in an email statement to ABCNews.com. "And we have received no complaints."
Moran added that "no investigation is ongoing" and said he couldn't speculate on whether an investigation would be launched if formal complaints were filed with the department.
At 1:30 a.m. this morning, Beyonce, Jay-Z, and their newborn left the hospital in a caravan of vehicles. Also today, Lenox Hill released a statement shooting down reports that the star couple paid $1.3 million for a luxury baby delivery suite and said that while the family "does have its own security detail," the hospital has "made every effort to ensure minimal disruption to other families experiencing the births of their own children over the past three days," and "no security plan that we or the Carter's security team put in place would have prevented or delayed families from gaining access to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit."
Rozz Nash-Coulon and her husband Neil, who were visiting their twin daughters in the neonatal intensive care unit the day before Blue Ivy was born, aired their grievances about Lenox Hill's treatment in a New York Times article Monday. (The couple previously vented to The New York Daily News.) They described being stopped by burly, earpiece-wearing security guards with "Special Event" badges and seeing the maternity ward transformed, its windows covered and security cameras taped over.
"It was just really disgusting," Rozz Nash-Coulon told the Times."We really believe the hospital is culpable in this because they didn't let us know what was happening. And the security of our children is at risk when you cover security cameras."
Another father, Edgar Ramirez, told the Times that security guards kept him out of the neonatal unit for three hours, while his wife and newborn waited for him.
Not all parents had a negative experience. Lindsay and Eric Levine welcomed their first daughter at Lenox Hill on Jan. 5 and were discharged on Sunday. Eric Levine told ABCNews.com that Beyonce and Jay-Z's presence "did not affect our experience in any way."
"On the sixth floor where we were, there were no issues whatsoever," he said. "People were able to come and go easily. It was a little bit tighter security than usual, but at the end of the day, I don't think it affected us at all."