He walked into Saint Barnabas Hospital asking to be treated for a rash — but more than eight hours later, Jon Verrier was found dead in his chair in the crowded ER waiting room, hospital officials concede.

The 30-year-old amateur artist may have been dead for hours, according to a mortified employee who was there in the Bronx emergency room Monday morning when the corpse was ­finally discovered.

“He was found stiff, blue and cold,” the employee said, speaking to ABC News on condition of anonymity. “He died because [there’s] not enough staff to take care of the number of patients we see each day. We need more staff at Saint Barnabas.”

Officials at the 461-bed facility said Verrier checked into the ER at 10 p.m. Sunday and was found dead at 6:40 the next morning.

Upon his arrival, he was registered, triaged and told to wait to see a doctor, said Saint Barnabas spokesman Steve Clark, adding that Verrier was told to wait inside the ER itself but for some reason returned to the waiting room and took a seat.

Between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m., his name was called “two or three times” and he did not answer, Clark said.

At 2 a.m., a security guard made a pass through the waiting room to roust the many homeless people who try to sleep there.

“Nothing was awry — he was moving, he was alive” during that 2 a.m. check, Clark said.

Surveillance video from elsewhere in the hospital recorded Verrier alive and “moving” at 3:45 a.m., Clark said.

“Then after 6, when security did another pass, he was dead,” the hospital spokesman said.