"Also something that's no small matter is that we have staff that can communicate with patients in their native language so they understand what they need treated," Jiang said. Garfield's patients are predominantly Chinese or Latino. "English speakers are in the minority," Jiang said.
Kaiser Permanente officials disagreed with the study's methodology, saying that it improperly included patients who contracted pneumonia while already hospitalized. Such patients have a higher risk of death.
"They were all pooled together, which made the mortality rates look worse than they really were," said John Brookey, assistant medical director for Southern California Kaiser Permanente.
Kaiser Permanente, the state's largest HMO, serves 3.2 million people a year in Southern California and has 30 hospitals throughout California.
Kaiser facilities have previously received poor marks in the report.
When the study was last released, in 2004, six of the hospitals on the list were operated by Kaiser, three of them in Los Angeles County and two in the Inland Empire. Of those six, only Kaiser's hospitals in Riverside and South Sacramento made the list again this year.
One Kaiser facility made the best-25 list: the Kaiser Foundation Hospital and Rehabilitation Center in Vallejo.
francisco.varaorta @latimes.com
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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)
Pneumonia death rates
The vast majority of hospitals in California fared as expected for treating patients with pneumonia between 2002 and 2004. Below are Southern California hospitals that had significantly higher or lower death rates than expected.
Hospitals rated better than average (by county)
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Los Angeles
Alhambra Hospital-Alhambra
Beverly Hospital
Cedars-Sinai Medical Center
East Los Angeles Doctor's Hospital
Garfield Medical Center
St. Vincent Medical Center
*
Orange
Columbia San Clemente Hospital Medical Center
Irvine Regional Hospital and Medical Center
UC Irvine Medical Center
*
Riverside
None
*
San Bernardino
None
*
Ventura
Los Robles Regional Medical Center
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Hospitals rated worse than average (by county)
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Los Angeles
Coast Plaza Doctor's Hospital
Kaiser Foundation Hospital-Panorama City
Harbor-UCLA Medical Center
Pacifica Hospital of the Valley
Torrance Memorial Medical Center
*
Orange
Coastal Communities Hospital
Placentia-Linda Community Hospital
West Anaheim Medical Center
*
Riverside
Desert Regional Medical Center
Kaiser Foundation Hospital-Riverside
Parkview Community Hospital
San Gorgonio Memorial Hospital
*
San Bernardino
Redlands Community Hospital
*
Ventura
None
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Source: California Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development
