This is one of the most bizarre stories of a bizarre summer of stories: A woman disappeared from a hospital and sparked an intense search by authorities, family and friends… and was just found dead in a stairwell of the hospital, 17 days later.
As the story concludes, there are some questions needing answers here.
I understand that it was an exterior stairwell, but I would expect that someone used it in over two weeks. Did they just step over her?
I am amazed that when the hospital realized they had a missing patient that they didn’t check every area of the hospital.
Found dead in a stairwell? Bunch of amateurs.
No, it was a locked fire exit that was alarmed from the outside. She was found during a routine inspection of an area not normally used by anyone, that the hospital must have believed it was impossible for anyone to enter without the alarm sounding.
ETA, I’m not saying the hospital did a great job here, only that it was an unused exit, and no one would be stepping over her, other than the inspector who actually found her.
I work in a clinic building that’s part of a hospital complex, and did once experience a lost person situation. A patient brought a man along with her to her doctor’s visit. During a long part of the visit where she was undergoing imaging, he appeared to be looking for her, so I explained that she was still having photos done, and he said he was going to go get something to eat. When she was done with the photos I told her this, and she was horrified. He was a neighbor, moderately afflicted with Alzheimer’s, who she was supposed to be watching, and she took him along to her doctor’s appointment without telling anyone in our office about his condition, and (knowing the photos would take about a half hour, from previous visits’ experience) left him in the waiting room without warning us about him.
I called Security immediately and then went off on my own search, but I checked things like the bathrooms, nearby waiting rooms, and the hospital cafeteria and lobbies. I don’t know where Security searched; I’m sure they have designated plans or something, but I’m just saying that checking the stairs didn’t occur to me. Maybe it would have if the search had taken longer. He was found sitting in the lobby about 20 minutes later, so he was somewhere else when I checked down there.
I suspect this is more likely to happen in an inpatient setting due to patients’ conditions, hospital psychosis, etc., so they should have more complete plans for that kind of situation.
(I’ve mentioned before that my own mother-in-law, when in her mid-70s and frail, was experiencing hospital psychosis during her stay before getting stents put in around her heart. She had decided that she was in a hotel, and was spotted attempting to leave - and it took 4 orderlies and some restraints and sedation to keep her there. :eek: )
I’ve been reading about this.
I’ve been wondering if the patient was a smoker. I’ve heard that smoking hospital patients go anywhere they can to smoke a cigarette, and that exterior stairways are a popular place.
On the other hand, she may have been disoriented and trying to leave and the stairway looked like an exit to her.
I assume we’ll get the complete story eventually, but at this point I can’t make any sense out of any part of this tragedy. From leaving her room on a Wednesday morning (i.e., not in the middle of the night) and not being spotted walking (we assume) several hundred yards to that stairwell to not being found soon to not being found for two weeks to, um, no one noticing her decomposition for at least a week… it’s a job for Major Whiskey T. Foxtrot.
Decomposition taking place outside won’t necessarily be smelled inside, and as for walking several hundred yards without being noticed… so long as nobody noticed the moment she opened the door and stepped out, she was just another patient in a hospital. It’s like postman uniforms or clipboards, the person inside becomes invisible.
They don’t do drills for doing a thorough house search for missing patients. If they did, they would have found her sooner. I’ll believe that 17 days is their base expectation for that kind of job.
And that indecent is your introduction to socialized medicine. 
Nope, it’s your introduction to large-organizational failure. I’m getting very tired of this talking point that only governments can fail in this way. It’s a convenient propaganda point hauled out by opponents of government.
Have you never worked for a very large corporation? They can be just as stupid-minded. But at least democratic governments are theoretically subject to direct oversight by the people. Private corporations need to be regulated.
There are tons of nooks and crannies in large buildings and people will easily overlook things they are “sure” are secured. More than one missing kid has died in a locked car trunk only feet from the people searching for him.
I’m wondering if she was found in her hospital gown, or had she gotten dressed in her street clothes? I’m sure they would have known that part shortly after she disappeared.
I worked in a fairly small hospital, and this sounded like an impossible situation until I remembered something. In surgery, we had a “secret storage” room. You took an elevator to it, and when the elevator door opened you were in a room with no windows and only 1 other exit, to a stairwell. However, that stairwell was only accessible by one other door, one floor down, which you had to have a key card to get into.
Someone (more likely an employee, as our patients were mostly unconscious) could conceivably take the elevator up, decided to take the stairs down, and die halfway, and quite possibly not be found for a very long time. No one ever used that stairway. Kind of creepy, actually. But now I can kind of understand how no one thought to search it. That’s why they need a really thorough plan for such events.
On the bright side, this case could be a bonanza for lawyers, and writers for Law and Order: SVU.
An alarm would have sounded as she opened the door to the stairwell, but somehow it went unheeded. From the Chronicle’s story of today:
“There is literature about this phenomenon,” May said. “We have alarm overload in medicine. We have alarms of various types that are intended to be safety measures, but it can be a cacophony of chirps and beeps and you can become desensitized to that. That is a recognized issue in health care and we are working to contend with that.”
She died of what? Hunger, thirst, or the medical condition she was admitted for? She checked herself into what she thought was a hospital, but was actually her grave. RIP.
Once a guy was found in a sewer, after about eight years.
evidently, someone opened the sewer manhole and dropped him in.
or he was tweaking, looking for a rock of crack he lost…
not sure how to explain sewer was closed up.
Now it’s being reported that a hospital orderly saw the unconscious woman in the stairwell and reported her.
He even stepped over her - twice! - on his way up and down the stairs.
Reading that, I’m kind of glad that my hospital has its own security force; I see the officers around the place daily. When I had my own “missing person” issue (mentioned above), the (plain-clothes) head of Security and a couple uniformed officers were on-scene rapidly, and he started making calls on the radio right after the situation was explained.