San Francisco General Hospital security flaw, stairwell door locked trap

Background story of why a woman may have got stuck in a stairwell and died (found dead 10/8/13).

San Francisco Examiner/Jonah Owen Lamb, 10/22/13.  "Months before body discovered in San Francisco General, hospital visitor got stuck in stairwell." 

All those pink buildings are part of San Francisco General Hospital

San Francisco General Hospital and trauma center

"Five months before the body of a missing patient was discovered in a rarely used San Francisco General Hospital stairwell, a woman visiting the hospital got stuck in a stairwell and no security personnel came to find her, even after she says an alarm was triggered...

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.

Months before in June, a woman from San Luis Obispo County who was visiting her son at San Francisco General decided to bypass the elevators to run an errand....   she used a stairwell, but saw no signs indicating it was only for emergencies or that doors leading back into the hospital would automatically lock.  ....  "I can see how someone who was not feeling well, perhaps confused by stress or medication, could find her way into such a stairwell at that hospital... "   Read article.

Related - San Francisco General Hospital Medical Center/UCSF, Department of Education.

Note photographs:  General Hospital and trauma center entrance by Lance Iversen from the San Francisco Chronicle;  street view of four hospital buildings by Rosencruz Sumera from Google Panoramio.
 
Posted by Kathy Meeh