Uneasy about hospital care? Headlines suggest you should be

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For a disquieting portrait of a psychiatric hospital, check out today’s story on Aurora Las Encinas Hospital in Pasadena.

The story, ‘Inspectors Found Problems Persisted at Pasadena Psychiatric Hospital,’ details the death of a 26-year-old patient who apparently wasn’t checked on for 24 hours, the habit by some employees of sleeping on the job — even, police have said, as a teenager was raped nearby — and the problems for one 79-year-old Vietnamese woman who seems to have lacked an interpreter.

Then, contributing to a general sense of unease about our hospitals, there’s this: ‘California Hospitals Fined for License Deficiencies’ and, of course, ‘Half of Nation’s Hospitals Running Losses’. The latter states that many are planning service and staffing cuts.

— Tami Dennis