OUCH!!!! San Francisco hospital fined $100,000 in patient death

[NRSKarenRN, BSN, RN]

found at healthleadersmedia.com

san francisco hospital fined $100,000 in patient death

california officials have fined san francisco's laguna honda hospital $100,000 for the death of an 82-year-old woman suffering from dementia. according to a statement issued by the california department of health services, the staff at laguna honda "failed to review, evaluate, update and implement the care plan" for the patient, "who was at high risk for falling and wandering."

san francisco chronicle, mar. 27, 2007

...jew said a hospital staffer was supposed to sit in su's room to monitor her but did not get there in time...

[Gromit]

What a shame. I didn't know hospitals still had opening windows. The last three facilities I've worked at didn't have any (in patients' rooms) that opened -oh, they USED to open, but all of them had been screwed shut and sealed long before I came to work there.

At one of them, they had (a few years previously) sealed them after a mental patient (who was in a room with a closed-circuit tv camera, no less) jumped out of the third-story window after a psychiatrist left his room (after doing an evaluation) -this guy fell two stories onto the roof of the cafeteria -survived it but was badly injured. They sealed ALL of the windows the following week -or so the story goes.

[RN BSN 2009]

That's awful

[sanctuary, BSN, MSN, RN]

Her husband was in the room that she fell from????? :confused:

[NRSKarenRN, BSN, RN]

Both were patients in same room at facility.

[snowfreeze, BSN, RN]

my questions are

#1 why was a high risk fall/wandering patient even admitted to a facility not safe for this type of patient?

#2 staff may have been at fault for not updating the paperwork but who agreed to admit the patient in the first place?

staff at laguna honda "failed to review, evaluate, update and implement the care plan" for the patient,

#3 why is such an outdated building being allowed to house any patients?

the hospital, which serves as a nursing home and rehabilitation center on a 62-acre site in the city's forest hill neighborhood, has been deemed seismically unsafe and outdated

#4 what happened to the updates and the bond monies?

in 1999, voters approved proposition a, a $299 million bond measure to rebuild laguna honda and increase its skilled nursing capacity by 135 beds, from 1,065 to a total of 1,200. the project has yet to be carried out.