UPMC Passavant
PITTSBURGH – Good news at the hospital turned into a series of falls, infection and surgeries preceding the death of a Lawrence County woman, a recent lawsuit alleges.
The biopsy of a mass on Lisa Kray’s thyroid returned benign, but she was left by staff at UPMC Passavant in a wheelchair that was a tripping hazard, the suit filed last week in the Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas alleges.
She fell, broke her foot, had surgery, became septic, had more surgeries, then fell again, the suit says. More than a year after the biopsy and after stints at several health-care facilities, Kray died in August 2025 at 56 years old.
The suit does not blame UPMC Passavant and University of Pittsburgh Physicians for Kray’s death but does not make claims for negligence that led to pain and suffering.
UPMC Passavant failed “to ensure there were proper policies and procedures to ensure safe and accident-free patient wheelchair transfers,” says the suit filed by her husband James and his lawyer, Chad Shannon of Shannon Law Group.
After her biopsy on Feb. 27, 2024, Lisa was left in a wheelchair while James retrieved their car. The staffer who rolled her to the exit left, the suit says, with the footrests still down. The suit called that a “tripping hazard” that sent her falling into a glass door and the floor.
She broke her foot and dislocated her shoulder and was sent to UPMC Presbyterian. Surgery on her broken heel bone happened shortly after, and Lisa was sent to a long-term acute care hospital then to Brighton Rehab Center.
A month after the surgery, she was transferred to Heritage Valley Beaver Hospital for a foul smell coming from her foot and “altered mental status.”
“When she arrived at the hospital, the decedent was slurring her words and was confused to the time and year,” the suit says.
Doctors diagnosed Lisa with sepsis originating in her foot, leading to three operations and a discharge to a skilled nursing facility on June 11, 2024. There she was deemed to be at risk of losing the lower part of her leg, but Lisa wanted to try to avoid that.
In April 2025, she returned home but fell and reinjured her shoulder, necessitating yet another surgery. She died four months later.
