A new report shows some Kern County hospitals reported higher death rates than the state average. Three Bakersfield hospitals received poor marks in the study.
You go there when you need them most but do you have any idea how your hospital measures up?
Well for the first time, the state has broken down death rates into eight categories ranging from strokes to brain surgeries.
The report from 2007 says Kern Medical Center, Bakersfield Memorial Hospital, and San Joaquin Community Hospital all had higher death rates in the craniotomy category, which is anytime the skull is opened for surgery.
While state officials say the study does take into account the number of cases treated at each hospital, Kern Medical Center CEO Paul Hensler believes death rates could be higher because his hospital sees so many trauma cases each year.
“Most of our cases are done for trauma; either a direct injury to the head or the brain is swelling and needs some relief by removing part of the skull, possibly a foreign object like a bullet,” Hensler said.
Officials at San Joaquin Community Hospital and Bakersfield Memorial Hospital say they appreciate the information from the state but questioned how the data is collected.
“Sometimes when you look at this kind of data there could had been other factors going on in that particular patient. In Kern County we tend to have folks that are a little bit more ill than the rest of the state,” Jarrod McNaughton of San Joaquin Community Hospital said.
“We review every surgical death as it occurs for opportunities of what we could have done to improve and with this information we will go back and look at it with a new eye so to speak,” Terri Church of Bakersfield Memorial Hospital said.
But the news is not all bad, each hospital scored about average in the other seven categories and Bakersfield Heart Hospital showed better than average mortality rates in stroke care.
State officials hope the data will improve the quality of health care and educate patients.
