Settlement in hospital death last year, San Francisco

San Francisco Chronicle/Jaxon Van Derbeken, 12/12/14. "$3 million settlement over dead woman in San Francisco General stairwell."

Patients can't just disappear, one did

San Francisco and the University of California have tentatively agreed to pay a total of $3 million to settle a claim filed by the family of a woman whose body was found in a San Francisco General Hospital stairwell 17 days after she disappeared from her room last year.

“No amount of money will bring back the mother of these two children,” said Haig Harris, attorney for the family of Lynne Spalding. He said the sum being paid to her 20-year-old son, Liam, and daughter, Simone, 24, amounts to a recognition that there was a “systematic breakdown” in hospital protocols for protecting patients.

“We hope that this case will provide new systems to protect all patients from this tragic loss of life,” Harris said. The city will pay $2.941 million and UC will pay $59,000, Harris said. UC was named in the family’s legal claim over Spalding’s death because its doctors and nurses were involved in her care and monitoring.

Related -  Fix Pacifica reprint article 10/23/13, SF General Hospital security flaw, 10/23/14. From San Francisco Examiner/Jonah Owen Lamb, 10/22/13, "Months before body discovered in San Francisco General ..." "Lynne Spalding, 57, disappeared from her hospital bed Sept. 21 and her body was discovered Oct. 8 by a hospital engineer performing a regularly scheduled inspection of an emergency exit stairwell. The cause and manner of death remain under investigation. "

Note photograph from UCSF at SFGH/San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center.

Posted by Kathy Meeh