Torrance Memorial Medical Center and the OSHPD Community-Acquired Pneumonia Mortality Report 2003-2005

California hospitals, including Torrance Memorial Medical Center, provide data to the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development (OSHPD) for the analysis of healthcare outcomes in California. OSHPD’s comparative hospital reporting is published on the Web site www.OSHPD.ca.gov and www.calhospitalcompare.com.

OSHPD recently released a report reflecting 2003-2005 mortality rates for patients dying of community-acquired pneumonia. In this report, the mortality rate for Torrance Memorial was categorized as “poor” compared to other county hospitals. Unfortunately, the data that Torrance Memorial submitted to OSHPD for this mortality report contained a serious data error which resulted in this misclassification.

Torrance Memorial Medical Staff Infectious Disease Committee Chairman Eric Milefchik, M.D. says, “After studying the preliminary OSHPD report, we engaged an outside physician specialist in infectious disease, Paul Holtom, M.D. from the Keck School of Medicine at USC, to review the Torrance Memorial data. His response led us to uncover this significant error in the submission of data to OSHPD.”

By OSHPD definitions, patients directly admitted to the hospital from nursing homes and board and care facilities should have been excluded from the classification of community-acquired pneumonia. By mistake, they were included in the Torrance Memorial data which greatly distorted the results as nursing home patients are generally much older and have a higher mortality rate from pneumonia.

"While it is not possible to calculate exactly, in 2005, almost one-third of the patients who died at Torrance Memorial with a diagnosis of community-acquired pneumonia were residents of nursing home or board and care facilities and should not have been counted in the data collected and submitted to OSHPD," says Dr. Milefchik.

OSHPD has been informed of the error, but the deadline for correcting the data has expired. The error has been corrected for reports reflecting 2007 and later.