Patient's 11 Story Death Plunge From Window In Grady Hospital Puts Medicare Funding For Atlanta's Hospital Of Last Resort In Jeopardy

Report: Grady failed to properly monitor patient who fell from window

AJC exclusive: Incident triggers federal probe, which could put Grady's Medicare funding in jeopardy

When a nurse checked in on Gloria Shavers at 1:20 a.m., she was sitting on the side of her hospital bed watching TV
Less than an hour later, the 60-year-old patient had fallen to her death from an 11th-floor window of Grady Memorial Hospital.
Grady didn’t have enough staff that night to provide the one-on-one monitoring a doctor said Shavers needed. And a window that should have been locked was open, according to a federal investigative report obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
The report, which details Grady’s failures in Shavers’ Sept. 6 death, has triggered federal regulators to call for a full survey of the Atlanta hospital. That means inspectors will show up unannounced in the coming weeks. It also means that if problems persist, Grady’s Medicare funding could be in jeopardy.
Grady’s problems were “determined to be of such serious nature as to substantially limit [Grady’s] capacity to render adequate care,” the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, a federal health-care regulator, wrote in a letter delivered last week to Grady corporate board chairman Pete Correll.
Grady said it’s aware of the findings and is taking action to fix the problems. Spokesman Matt Gove declined to comment on the inspection results, but he said each of Grady’s windows have since been checked, closed and locked. Tamper-proof screws have also been added
Of the 566 operable windows checked, 21 were found unlocked. Windows in patient rooms are designed to be opened only by technicians, according to the hospital.