From the Los Angeles Times:
State lists worst hospitals for care of pneumonia — Five Kaiser facilities have among the highest mortality rates.
By Francisco Vara-Orta, Times Staff Writer
Five Kaiser Permanente hospitals were among the 28 institutions with the highest death rates in California for patients with pneumonia, according to a state report to be released today.
The Kaiser hospitals in Sacramento, South Sacramento, Panorama City, Riverside and Roseville all had higher than average mortality rates between 2002 and 2004, said the California Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development.
Kaiser Thrive Exposed would like to personally thank Dr. Geoff Galbraith - Kaiser Permanente Care Management Institute board member; and Vice President, Hawaii Permanente Medical Group, Quality Improvement Management - for inspiring us to create this website. Did we make it into the top 5?
“It’s a death that can be prevented with better care,” Tran said. “Hospitals that seem to do better appear more active in the treatment of their patients.”
Does this come as any surprise? Most of the patients were probably told that it was all in their head and sent home or maybe they were told that they were too fat and this is why they had pneumonia. I guess the victims didn’t eat enough broccoli. We know how Kaiser likes to minimize symptoms of all kinds. I wonder how they fare in infant mortality rates.
It’s a death that could perhaps be minimized by choosing a healthcare facility other than Kaiser.
Doesn’t surprise me - thanks as usual for posting so quick. I’m blogging on it now.
I’d like the LA Times to make the link between these death rates and Health Connect. I believe that Sacramento, South Sacramento, and Roseville are 3 of the sites that have been “adopting” the Health Connect software for the longest time. I don’t know about Riverside or Panorama City. Vijaya Rogers started her Health Connect career in South Sacramento.
Most interesting to us is that once again, when Kaiser doesn’t control the survey results the “quality” scores suffer.
Our prediction: Kaiser will now begin aggressively treating pneumonia to game the outcomes, but people with some other ailment that the state doesn’t track will pay the price. It’s called cost shifting.
I believe it. I had pneumonia and it took 4 doctors to finally get to the bottom of it. I have had pneumonia before and knew that it was exactly what I had. None of the doctors even took an x-ray. My primary, who happened to be on a leave was the one to do the x-ray and diagnosed me with pneumonia. What a joke.
Personal Physician = inability to get same day appt to treat pneumonia. Kaiser stinks. Refused same day appt because personal physician was on duty. Personal refused same day appt wanted to treat via telephone call. What? are you serious? Phone it in? How do you do a chest xray over the phone. Threw a fit, spent 4 hours in urgent care after being refused same day appt at 7 am by appt line. After 4 hours in urgent care, informed by urgent care doctor that if I had waited, I would have required hospitalization for pneumonia. These idiots don’t have a clue. After 26 years with Kaiser, I’m bailing out. They are too big to give a damn. Never heard of treating pneumonia by phone. PS, personal physician was supposed to call within an hour, still hasn’t called after 2 days. Don’t let them give you a personal physician. It’s a total set up for disaster. Kaiser thrives should be changed to Kaiser KILLS! What idiots.
Funny that Mr. Kaiser spokesman doesn’t have a problem admitting that Kaiser has a major staph infection problem that causes people to get pneumonia AFTER being admitted to the hospital, yet they flat refuse to give us our records that, you know, actually say the same thing. Bastards.
[...] is ‘Thrive’-ing at Kaiser Permanente…unless you need a kidney transplant, or have pneumonia, or cancer, or a past due pregnancy, or a consumer complaint, or need a prescription, or, or, [...]
im very dissapointed with them …recovering from heart failure, anoxic brain injury from grandmal sizures and they cut off my health insurance because i have been on sickleave over 6 months. now i have to find a way to come up with 700 dollars for my sizure meds and antidepresants. im so dissapointed as an ex employee and ex patient. my life is in the biggest mess right now
My mother had pneumonia for months…hospitalized from MULITIPLE episodes of shortness of breath…all of a sudden she would stop breathing completely and the paramedics would have to come to the house. We didn’t know what to do!! Took months for them to do an ex-ray…they kept sending her home saying it was “all in her head” giving her anti depressents and panick attach medicine. WHAT A JOKE!!! They finally diagnosed her with pneumonia and sent her home with medicine and DID NOT hospitalize her!! She had emphazima as well from smoking. TOTAL NEGLECT. At 57 a final episode took her LIFE!! I feel KAISER IS RESPONSIBLE. I would like to visit each of the doctors my mother visited in Modesto, CA and ask them what the hell is wrong w/them??? I don’t know how they go to work each day and not lose sleep at night. Kaiser Permanente is an absolute JOKE!!!!!!!!!
Thought I would add my own experience to this. I am a 24 year old male in Sacramento. 2 years ago, after attending a music festival, I came down with a terrible cough. My voice pitch was also extremely low and eventually my co-workers urged me to see a doctor. I took with me a detailed record of the progression of my sickness to Kaiser.
When I got there I saw a doctor who was of Asian descent and did not appear to speak very good english. As I described my symptoms and offered my record to her she would only respond with “mmhm” every two seconds. It was annoying. Well…she prescribed me allergy pills and I ended up coming down with the early stages of pneumonia. I went back and another doctor immediately gave me a chest x-ray and some antibiotics. Cleared it up in about a week. I remember he told me that I was lucky I got in what I did or I might have been hospitalized.