AHCJ membership elects new board members
Members of the Association of Health Care Journalists elected two new names to the AHCJ board of directors and returned four incumbents to their posts for the 2009-11 term.
Felice J. Freyer of The Providence Journal and Maryn McKenna, an independent journalist and author, were selected to join the board. Incumbents Charles Ornstein of ProPublica, Karl Stark of The Philadelphia Inquirer, Carla K. Johnson of The Associated Press and Andrew Holtz, a Portland, Ore., independent journalist, were returned to the board.
They join board members elected last year for two-year terms: Trudy Lieberman of City University of New York, Ivan Oransky of Reuters Health, Mike Stobbe of The Associated Press, Julie Appleby of Kaiser Health News, Irene Wielawski an independent journalist from Pound Ridge, N.Y., and Phil Galewitz of Kaiser Health News.
Board members will select officers in the coming weeks. Current officers are Lieberman (president), Ornstein (vice president), Stark (treasurer) and Mary Chris Jaklevic (secretary), who chose not to run again.
The Association of Health Care Journalists is an independent, nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing public understanding of health care issues. Its mission is to improve the quality, accuracy and visibility of health care reporting, writing and editing. AHCJ is housed at the Missouri School of Journalism.
Berens, Aleccia win National Press Club awards
Two AHCJ members have won 2009 National Press Club awards.
The Seattle Times‘ Michael Berens and Ken Armstrong won the newspaper Consumer Journalism Award for newspapers for their project about methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), “Culture of Resistance.”
An MSNBC.com team that includes JoNel Aleccia won the Joan M. Friedenberg Online Journalism Award for “The Elkhart Project,” an ongoing look at Elkhart, Ind., intended to provide perspective on the national recession.
Pay for the person - not the procedures
When people talk about health reform it’s often shorthand for covering the uninsured. But improving access without tackling costs is a recipe for a fiscal crackup.
Just take a look at Massachusetts, a pioneer in universal coverage, where the cost of medical care is growing at more than 8 percent a year. Ballooning subsidies for coverage of the poor are one problem. Another is heavy use of high-priced hospital care.
The Boston Globe reports on the recommendations of a state commission to pay doctors and hospitals a set amount for each person’s care for a year. (Read the report here.)
Some might call it capitation redux. The payment approach, once popular with managed care, aims to curb incentives for doctors and hospitals to do more to get paid more. Previous attempts at capitation were too stingy and inflexible and remain worries this time around, critics say.
On the national front, the cost of health reform is moving to the fore, galvanizing opposition to the plans advanced in Congress. The Washington Post reports that the head of the Congressional Budget Office “delivered a devastating assessment” of the fiscal consequences of the proposals because they don’t do enough contain the fast-growing costs of government health programs.
Reporters miss crucial detail about Lewin Group
Filed under: Conflicts of interest, Health care reform, Health data, Health policy
The Lewin Group, which refers to itself as “a leading health care policy and management consulting firm,” has launched a Center for Comparative Effectiveness Research that is expected to offer research “for use by policy makers, researchers, health care providers and others to improve patient care and optimize resources.”
Some reporters writing about this development, and other issues, are still referring to the Lewin Group as a nonpartisan organization, yet AHCJ president Trudy Lieberman pointed out in April that the group is ultimately part of United Healthcare Group, a major insurance company. Lieberman turned up evidence indicating that there may be no formal protections in place for Lewin Group’s editorial independence.
However, in recent stories, ABC News, The Washington Post, Investor’s Business Daily, KPCC, a southern California public radio station, and other news outlets continue to describe the Lewin Group as “nonpartisan.” And, while the Lewin Group does refer to itself as “objective,” it’s probably not a good idea to overlook their corporate ties entirely.
AHCJ member founds local health news site
AHCJ member Dave Gulliver, formerly of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, launched the nonprofit Sarasota Health News late Wednesday night. In less than 24 hours, he posted five stories, including a feature, a computer-assisted piece and plenty of breaking news.
After being laid off in February, Gulliver said he looked around and saw that many important stories, including the watchdog and health business reports in which he had specialized, were going unreported.
“There are great stories that need to be told, that need to be written, and I thought I can still do those,” Gulliver said. “I don’t need a printing plant to do the job.”
Dave Gulliver
He may no longer depend upon the printing press, but Gulliver now relies on something else: community support.
“For now, investigative reporting and news reporting – at least on the Internet – doesn’t have the commercial viability, but there seems to be a lot of philanthropic support out there so I decided to go [the nonprofit] route,” Gulliver said. “I’m fortunate that I live in Sarasota, Fla. which is a pretty progressive community. There are a lot of people out there willing to support a venture like this.”
Sarasota Health News hews to a more traditional news format rather than a more informal, blog-like approach because that’s where Gulliver’s experience lies.
“I think you have to do something to stand out from what’s already out there,” Gulliver said. “I had to go with what my strength was and what would stand out a little bit. It’s what I was doing before, it was really well received, and there’s still an audience for it.”
Gulliver said his content would ultimately depend on what that audience was looking for, but that he would focus on general health care with a heavy focus on watchdog, investigative and explanatory work.
“People really don’t know what’s going on under the hood of health care and I think they really want to know that,” Gulliver said.
U.K. official praises British health reporting
Filed under: Europe, Health journalism, Hot Health Headline
Christie Silk reports the World Editor’s Forum’s editorsweblog.org that Lord Drayson, U.K. minister for science and innovation, told the World Conference of Science Journalists in London that the work of British health and science journalists “is of a very high standard,” provided journalists have access to scientists and are “centre stage.” According to Drayson, the work of such journalists provides an essential public service and helps the public make informed decisions.
House reform bill includes serious disclosure rules
Filed under: Health care reform, Health data, Health journalism, Health policy, Hot Health Headline, Member news, Pharmaceuticals
The health care reform bill to be considered by the House of Representatives (1018-page pdf) includes strict disclosure requirements regarding “financial relationships between manufacturers and distributors of covered drugs, devices, biologicals, or medical supplies under Medicare, Medicaid, or CHIP and physicians and other health care entities” (see “Physician Payments Sunshine Provision” on pages 635 through 653).
All such entities would be required to file annual disclosure reports. Exemptions include investments, goods intended for charity care, short-term equipment loans and payments or transfers of value of less than $5.
Organization: Teen breast tests wasteful, harmful
Jeff Baillon of KMSP in Minnesota’s Twin Cities reports that the National Breast Cancer Coalition (a nonprofit grassroots advocacy and fundraising organization) opposes Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s proposed education program pushing for breast cancer screening in girls as young as 15.
The coalition’s president called the bill a “waste of taxpayer dollars,” saying that it could actually “harm young women,” Baillon reported.
In the piece, oncologist Barry Kramer, who leads the Office of Disease Prevention at the National Institutes of Health, sayys there is no evidence that early screening is beneficial to young women, and some that it may even harm them through unnecessary biopsies that may then impede detection later in life when the risks are much higher.
Related
- Experts question early breast cancer screening push
- Cancer Screening: The Clash between Intuition and Science
Kramer, who spoke at Health Journalism 2008, made this presentation on the panel “Lies, damned lies and medical statistics: How to interpret the evidence” at Health Journalism 2008.
Popular bypass technique may raise risks
There’s nothing too glamorous about bypass surgery. Your chest gets cracked wide open and the surgeon probably uses veins stripped from your legs to reroute blood around the blocked arteries that feed your heart.
The good news is that when those new pipes are put in properly they can last a decade or longer. But when minimally invasive techniques are used to pluck those veins from the legs instead of the more painful direct approach, the outcome of bypass might not be as solid, according to a study just published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Patients whose bypass grafts were obtained the less invasive way were more likely to have reclogging after a year than those whose veins were obtained the old-fashioned way. (46.7 percent vs. 38.0 percent). Worse, at three years patients with endoscopically harvested veins were more likely to have had serious problems, including death.
The less invasive approach to extracting blood vessels for use as replacements for coronary arteries is popular – used about 70 percent of the time – because it doesn’t hurt as much and infection rates are lower. But this study, despite its limitations (it was observational and not prospective) raises questions about the best way to go. “The decision about the best way to harvest veins for [bypass] has just gotten a lot more complicated,” writes cardiologist Harlan Krumholz for Journal Watch.
Hospitals harness social media
Jackie Fox writes in the Omaha World-Herald about local institutions’ use of social media to reach out to consumers and to provide information in the formats and locations in which consumers are likely to look.
One institution views social media as a customer service, providing patients with blogs they can use to share health updates with family and friends. Some find and reply to relevant blog posts or tweets.
Others, such as the Nebraska Medical Center, post videos on YouTube of treatments or procedures.
“It’s a good educational tool for procedures people may not be familiar with. People may decide this is someone they’d like an appointment with, or doctors in other parts of the state learn they can send patients to a specialist closer to home,” [media relations lead Paul ]Baltes said.
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Awards for Excellence in Health Care JournalismDeadline: Feb. 3
- How I did it: Falsified charts in nursing homes linked to patient care
- Access Denied: Looking at a lack of health care availability
- Transparency & medical errors: Public reporting of patient harm is a potent force
- Focus on freelancing: Tips for buying liability insurance
- Why do some patients get stuck in hospitals for weeks, months?
- Investigate health professionals and the boards that regulate them
- Presidents of AHCJ, SPJ call for more openness from Obama administration
