Deborah Schoch's blog

Northridge remembered: How quake left hospitals in the dark

By Deborah Schoch | February 7, 2013

The giant shaking hit at 4:31 a.m. on Jan. 17, 1994, jolting awake millions of residents across the Los Angeles Basin.

In Los Angeles’ Fairfax District, we scrambled outside to the dark streets in pajamas and bare feet, terrified, staring at the blinding arc flashes on overhead power lines as sirens began howling far away. 

We were lucky.  The Northridge quake killed 60 people, injured more than 7,000 and crippled hospitals throughout the Los Angeles area, blackening emergency rooms and shutting down ventilators and other live-saving equipment.

The shaking damaged some medical centers so badly that 600 to 700 patients were evacuated via helicopters and MTA buses.

Fresh start in the fight against hospital infections

By Deborah Schoch | January 25, 2013

In recent years, I’ve written about flaws in how California has overseen the problem of hospital-related infections. 

This state was slow to tackle the topic, slow to publish hospital infection rates, slow to make those reports understandable to anyone lacking a degree in epidemiology.

That may be history now.

State health officials started fresh this week with the seating of a new advisory panel on hospital acquired infections.

That may sound like pure bureaucratese. But there was an air of true excitement when the new members introduced themselves and described their commitment to driving down the number of patients infected during hospital stays.

Californians get extra time to prepare for flu bug

By Deborah Schoch | January 10, 2013

All around us, we’re watching friends and relatives fall prey to head colds, and worse, this year’s fierce strain of flu.

My next-door neighbor went down before Christmas with her eight-year-old son, trapped at home until last weekend.  My office mate John Gonzales, couch-bound for five days, wobbled into work Wednesday with Kleenex, a faint voice and ragged cough.

So I called the California Department of Public Health with a question:  Are we engulfed in the same flu epidemic sweeping the East, South and Midwest?

Not quite yet, I learned. We’re in the “calm before the storm,” and that gives us a second chance to get flu shots if we haven’t already.

California's 'hospitals-in-a-box' are threatened

By Deborah Schoch | November 1, 2012

When I heard Wednesday that the last 300 patients were being evacuated at New York City’s Bellevue Hospital Center, I began thinking of what an earthquake could do to hospitals here in Los Angeles.

In storm-stricken New York, other hospitals scrambled to find space for patients. National Guard troops carried many of them down hundreds of stairs in a behemoth 828-bed public hospital building crippled by power outages and flooding.

Sharp Focus on C. difficile at huge infection convention

By Deborah Schoch | October 18, 2012

SAN DIEGO--I made the mistake of clicking “print” on my computer when I saw the link to the IDWeek2012 final program.

Our office printer nearly choked.  Out spewed 164 pages, most in small print, listing thousands of events happening this week at the mammoth gathering of infectious disease experts in San Diego.

The words Clostridium difficile show up on page after page.  An on-line search shows the deadly infection is the topic of 150 events--symposia, oral abstract sessions and poster sessions--here at IDWEEK.

New blood sought for vanished state infections panel

By Deborah Schoch | October 9, 2012

Something unusual happened inside California’s public health agency last month, unbeknownst to the general public.

An agency advisory panel shut down. It put itself out of business after approving new rules for its own makeup. The state’s Healthcare Associated Infection Advisory Committee is kaput.

Now the state Department of Public Health is looking for fresh blood for a new panel, people who want to curb infections that can sicken, maim or even kill hospital patients. If that describes you, the deadline to apply is Oct. 19.

Cash-starved CA waits for $1.8 million as hospitals appeal fines for mistakes

By Deborah Schoch | September 7, 2012

California regulators made headlines last week with the news that they’re charging 14 hospitals a total of $825,000 in fines for mistakes that endangered the safety of their patients.

The fines would seem like a boon for this cash-starved state. Created under a 2007 law, the collected penalties are supposed to fund state projects to improve the quality of hospital care.

But the state is coming up short, I learned this week. The state Department of Public Health had actually levied $8.4 million in fines under the law before last week and it’s still waiting to collect $1.8 million of that money.

At Riverside hospital, progress on infections

By Deborah Schoch | August 17, 2012

When I first telephoned infection expert Dr. Silvia Gnass in early 2011, a new state report had just rated her Riverside area hospital among the worst facilities in California for a deadly kind of catheter-related infection.

Clearly, this was a bad time to call.  At a number of other hospitals that got poor ratings, officials had either criticized the data or never returned my calls.

To my surprise, Gnass promptly called back.  With refreshing candor, she acknowledged that the ratings were dismal. But just wait, she said. Change is afoot. Next time, the ratings would change.

A tale of two cities, and two life expectancies

By Deborah Schoch | July 26, 2012

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- I was traveling from Orange County to Stockton recently when I spotted a giant billboard in Terminal B at Sacramento International Airport.

It appeared to be touting sports scores, perhaps Little League or girls’ soccer.

“Stockton 73.  Irvine 88,” read the billboard’s big orange letters.  

The smaller print explained it.  Life expectancy is 73 years in Stockton zip code 95202, compared to 88 years in the Irvine area zip code 92606 in Orange County.  The rate statewide is 80.1.

A boy’s face dominated the billboard.  His left brow, next to the Stockton statistics, was furrowed.  The right side of his face, the Irvine side, was calm.

Role change: When journalists turn into patients

By Deborah Schoch | June 5, 2012

From the start, I kept a journalist’s sharp eye trained on the nurses’ hands. Did hospital workers pull on fresh gloves before touching me?

How many of them asked for my birth date? Did they grill me about what condition brought me to this pre-surgery unit at 5:30 a.m.?

Some patients get annoyed at such inquiries. Not me.

As a health care writer, I’ve written too many stories about hospital-acquired infections, wrong-side surgeries, even wrong-patient surgeries in which a patient lost a healthy gallbladder or unscathed knee.

So go right ahead and ask me again: The procedure will remove the cataract in which eye?

Last month, I walked into a Los Angeles area hospital for cataract surgery that I had successfully postponed for years.

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