ONLY 3 AREA HOSPITALS RATE 'SUPERIOR'.

Byline: BRAD A. GREENBERG

Staff Writer

A statewide effort launched Tuesday to increase hospital transparency and improve patient care reported "poor" patient satisfaction at six of the nine participating area hospitals.

In the Santa Clarita and San Fernando valleys and eastern Ventura County, only Providence Holy Cross Medical Center in Mission Hills, Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center in Burbank and Kaiser Permanente Medical Center, Woodland Hills, were rated "superior" by patients in the debut of CalHospitalCompare.org.

The Web site allows consumers to browse patient satisfaction at 209 California hospitals and determine which offer the best care for pneumonia, maternity and heart attack, heart failure and bypass.

"Having the hospitals compared against each other helps the hospitals improve," said Maribeth Shannon, who led the effort for the nonprofit California HealthCare Foundation. "Nobody wants to look bad on any quality-of-care measure. So having that out in the public really focuses the hospital on correcting any deficiencies."

Three years in the making, the site was funded by the foundation and the California Hospital Assessment and Reporting Taskforce, which includes hospitals, health plans, medical professionals and consumer groups.

Participation was voluntary, and the database includes information on hospitals that account for about 70 percent of patient discharges.

Many smaller hospitals opted out because of unavailable finances or resources, said Jan Emerson, a spokeswoman for the California Hospital Association. Los Angeles County hospitals did not participate in the first year, but will submit data later this month, spokesman Michael Wilson said.

Among area hospitals, the lowest marks went to Simi Valley Hospital, which scored a 60 percent in patient satisfaction and rated poor for heart attack and heart failure care and average for pneumonia and maternity care.

"We've had some issues," said President and CEO Gary Irish. "This might serve as a baseline. The management team, however, I think has a good plan in place. And we would expect our scores to go up."

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Hospital study

Nine hospitals in the San Fernando and Santa Clarita valleys and eastern Ventura County participated in the voluntary statewide study of 209 hospitals. Here are their overall patient-satisfaction ratings, out of 100. For more information and complete results, log on to www.calhospitalcompare.org:

Statewide average, 79.

Providence Holy Cross: Superior, 88.

Providence Saint Joseph: Superior, 87.

Kaiser Permanente, Woodland Hills: Superior, 84.

Glendale Memorial Hospital and Health Center: Poor, 74.

Glendale Adventist: Poor, 73.

Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital: Poor, 73.

Northridge Hospital Medical Center: Poor, 71.

Kaiser Permanente, Panorama City: Poor, 68.

Simi Valley Hospital: Poor, 60.

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Hospital study (see text)