Body found in stairwell of hospital building

A woman’s body was found in the stairwell of a locked power plant building at San Francisco General Hospital on Wednesday afternoon, officials said.

The woman was identified by the hospital as Ruby Andersen, 75. Family members told media outlets that Andersen had dementia and had been receiving care in a mental health facility at San Francisco General.

Rachael Kagan, a spokeswoman for the San Francisco Department of Public Health, said Andersen had not been a patient at the hospital. She added that privacy rules prevented her from saying whether Andersen had been treated at other nonhospital facilities on the medical center campus. She

also could not say whether Andersen had dementia.

The discovery of Andersen’s body was reminiscent of a 2013 case, in which the body of a San Francisco General patient, Lynne Spalding, was found in a hospital stairwell more than two weeks after she went missing from her room.

Andersen’s body was discovered by a hospital staff member about 1 p.m. in a locked building that is not used for patient care. Officials are reviewing video footage from on-site cameras for clues as to how she got into the building, Kagan said.

The cause of death is under investigation.

“We’re very concerned that this happened. We don’t know how this person gained access to the area where she was found,” Kagan said.

The case is being investigated by San Francisco’s Public Health Department, Sheriff ’s Department, Fire Department and Police Department.

The hospital power plant where Andersen was found is behind Building 80, an outpatient clinic, on 22nd Street and San Bruno Avenue, across 22nd Street from the main hospital building.

Several nonhospital buildings are nearby, including a tuberculosis clinic and a methadone clinic. The power plant is across the parking lot from the Behavioral Health Center, an inpatient mental health facilityrun by the public health department. The two-story power plant structure was built in 1971.

Kagan said the body was found by an employee on the engineering staff in an internal stairwell.

Spalding’s body also was found by a hospital employee, in an outside stairwell used as an emergency exit at the main hospital. Spalding, 57, had been in the hospital with a bladder infection.

Doctors had noted that Spalding was weak and disoriented and had ordered that she be constantly monitored, but she still was able to wander from her room. Four days before her body was found, a doctor had reported seeing a woman slumped over in the stairwell, but no one went looking for her then.

An autopsy revealed that Spalding had died of dehydration and liver problems, and that she had been dead for several days when her body was discovered. San Francisco paid the woman’s family a nearly $3 million settlement.

After that incident, the hospital put into place new policies for checking on patients, including regular passes through building stairwells. Kagan noted that with Spalding, the hospital had known she was missing and had been looking for her. That is not the case with Andersen, Kagan said. She said there are no patients currently missing from the hospital.

“We know of no connections between these two incidents,” Kagan said. “But it is too early to draw conclusions about what happened today.”

But Spalding’s family said Wednesday that news of another body found in a stairwell had dredged up old grief and frustration, said David Perry, a spokesman for the family.

“The circumstances and systemic failures that led to Lynne’s going missing — staying missing and ultimately dying, abandoned, on a stairwell at San Francisco General — were thought to have been corrected,” Perry said in a statement. “The facts in this most recent case are still not clear. However, one thing is: the pain that the family of this woman is going through.”