Last year, 30 patients died at Coalinga State Hospital, a psychiatric facility in western Fresno County. That's more than 2 percent of the population--a death rate that's almost twice the average of California’s entire state hospital system, and almost seven times higher than the rate within the state prison system.
Recently, we investigated why, and whether any of those deaths could have been prevented.
In this interview, reporter Kerry Klein pulls back the curtain on how she investigated this story, including the data, documents, and patients she relied on to tell it, as well as how she approached sources who preferred to remain off the record.
