UK reporter gains ground in chiropractor libel suit
Filed under: Europe, Government, Health journalism, Hot Health Headline
UK journalist Simon Singh has gained ground in his ongoing defense against a libel suit leveled by British chiropractors, with the reversal of a ruling that had said his words were (potentially libelous) fact instead of (protected) commentary. The words in question included the assertion that the British Chiropractic Association “happily promotes bogus treatments.”
The dispute has been over whether or not his words imply that the BCA was being consciously dishonest and deceptive.
Covering Health has written about UK libel cases in the past, and this case has received a fair amount of attention, but those who haven’t been following the Singh case can find a competent primer on Wikipedia.
The BBC calls it a “landmark ruling,” then explains:
BBC News science correspondent Pallab Ghosh says that, had Justice Eady’s ruling stood, it would have made it difficult for any scientist or science journalist to question claims made by companies or organisations without opening themselves up to a libel action that would be hard to win.
The BBC reported that Singh praised the ruling and said the legal wind finally seemed to be at his back, but that he bemoaned the fact that it had cost £200,000 to get to that point.
“The Court of Appeal’s made a very wise decision, but it just shouldn’t be so horrendously expensive for a journalist or an academic journal or a scientist to defend what they mean.
“That’s why people back off from saying what they really mean.”
(Hat tip to Knight Science Journalism Tracker)
Reinhardt called out for conflicts of interest
Filed under: Conflicts of interest, Health journalism, Hospitals, Hot Health Headline, Public records
Bloggers and online journalists (Health Care Renewal, the nytpicker, Business Insider) have noticed that Princeton health economist Uwe Reinhardt, who writes for The New York Times‘ Economix blog and was the keynote speaker at Health Journalism 2009, earns $500,000 a year working for a number of health care companies, owns about $5 million in related stock, and thus appears to be in violation of The New York Times‘ conflict-of-interest policy. The conflicts are not yet listed on his Times bio, though the newspaper and Reinhardt both promise they will be soon.
Uwe Reinhardt at Health Journalism 2009
Business Insider’s Lauren Hatch got Reinhardt’s response. The economist said he has never “shilled” for a company, and that his connections enhance, rather than skew, his blogging. He does, however, acknowledge the apparent conflict of interest.
“I guess I have to take the rap for this, but I don’t see it as an ethical lapse,” (Reinhardt) told (Business Insider) in a phone interview. “It never occurred to me. My board memberships are public knowledge.”
…
“When all is said and done, they pointed it out and that’s good. I had no intent to be unethical or deceitful. I have talked to the New York Times and soon my board memberships will be added to the bio so everyone can see it.”
As of 3 p.m. Eastern on April 8, those conflicts have not yet been disclosed on his bio. The Business Insider story was posted on April 6.
The New York Times, for its part, provided Business Insider with the following statement:
“Professor Reinhardt is a leading expert on the economics of health care, and has provided valuable and independent insights in his blog posts. He has mentioned his service on corporate boards in the blog, but we are reviewing how to more fully describe his activities for readers of Economix.”
According to nytpicker, which seems to have come to the story first, Reinhardt is involved with at least five private health-related enterprises, for which he is being compensated with both cash and stock options. Those include Amerigroup Corporation, Boston Scientific, H&Q Healthcare Investors and H&Q Life Sciences Investors, and Legacy Hospital partners.
U.S. global health policy focus of guide
In recognition of the major role global health issues now play in even the most local stories, the Kaiser Family Foundation has released a 41-page “Reporter’s Guide to U.S. Global Health Policy” (PDF).
The guide devotes sections to diseases/issues (HIV/AIDS, Malaria, Tuberculosis, Neglected Tropical Diseases, Maternal and Child Health, Water-Related Diseases, Food Insecurity), U.S. funding of global health efforts (Obama’s Global Health Initiative), relevant policy issues and policymaking. It also catalogues and explains related multinational and NGO efforts and lists news-making events.
Lieberman: Pollack wrong, reform coverage lacking
Filed under: Health care reform, Health journalism
Last week, Harold Pollack (bio), a University of Chicago professor who has been contributing to The New Republic’s The Treatment blog, recently referred to health care reform reporting as “the most careful, most thorough, and most effective reporting of any major story, ever.”
AHCJ Immediate Past President Trudy Lieberman took issue with that in a post on CJR.org.
Better coverage than the Vietnam War; the civil rights movement; the consumer movement? Really? In the case of the civil rights struggle, the press helped change the discourse; Americans began to view race in a new way, which led to the eventual passage of the Civil Rights Act. During the Vietnam War, the media effectively changed the public dialogue from a war we couldn’t lose to one we could not win. In the early days of the consumer movement, media coverage of Ralph Nader led Congress to enact significant consumer protections. Coverage of health reform has hardly risen to that level.
Lieberman writes that health care reform coverage failed because the public was inadequately educated on the finer points of reform efforts. Her evidence? That public opinion was roughly split on reform. Had reporting been better, Lieberman writes, public support levels would have been higher. She then brings up a number of issues she says were undercovered and uses examples to back them up.
For advice from Lieberman and three other journalists on the front lines on what needs to be covered next and how to approach this complex topic, see this special tip sheet.
CMS, HHS unveiling transparency efforts
A beta Medicare Dashboard designed to “use inpatient hospital payment and volume information to visualize trends in the use of and costs for certain covered services under original fee-for-service Medicare” is part of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ response to the Obama administration’s Open Government Directive.
In a press release, CMS says the dashboard can help users compare hospitals to learn about utilization and costs. The data available now includes inpatient discharges from January 2006 to December 2009.
Also as a result of the directive, CMS will be making available basic Medicare utilization and Medicaid State Plan documents on the Data.gov Web site.
Perhaps of most interest to AHCJ members:
In addition, significant improvements have been made to the user interface and analytical tool to access existing CMS COMPARE data on provider quality (at data.medicare.gov). Along with other HHS agencies, CMS will participate in the new Community Health Data Initiative, which will include state and regional aggregate indicators of Medicare health care costs, quality, prevalence of disease, and utilization of service.
The Open Government Plan is available online and will be presented during a live webcast at noon ET on Wednesday.
A separate press release says the Department of Health and Human Services will unveil its Open Government Plan in a live webcast at 1:30 p.m. ET on Wednesday. Questions can be sent in advance to open@hhs.gov.
AHCJ clarifies statement on medical meeting rules
The Association of Health Care Journalists has posted a clarification to a March announcement concerning restrictions on reporters who cover meetings at which medical societies present scientific findings.
The original announcement said that eight organizations ban photography and recording, and AHCJ wrote letters asking them to lift their bans. AHCJ has since learned that only four have outright prohibitions, while the others have varying degrees of restrictions.
“We regret overstating the problem,” said Felice J. Freyer, chair of AHCJ’s Right to Know Committee. “We now know that not all the groups named are equally restrictive. But we continue to be concerned about rules that make it difficult for reporters to get complete, accurate stories. We will strive to work with these organizations to find ways to satisfy both their needs and those of our members.”
In 2008, fewer preterm babies, more cesareans
Births in the United States went down nearly 2 percent in 2008, according to new figures [PDF] from the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics.
Among the report’s highlights:
- The birth rate for U.S. teenagers fell 2 percent, reversing a two-year increase.
- The birth rate for Hispanic teenagers declined to an historic low.
- The cesarean delivery rate rose for the 12th straight year, to 32.3 percent of all births.
- The percentage of births born preterm declined 3 percent.
Health Journalism 2010
Learn more about “Pregnancy and childbirth trends: Issues of safety and choice,” a panel featuring Mark R. Chassin, M.D., president of The Joint Commission; Julie Deardorff, health and fitness reporter at the Chicago Tribune; Alan M. Peaceman, M.D., professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine and chief of the Division of Maternal-Fetal Medicine at Northwestern Memorial Hospital; and moderated by Deborah L. Shelton, a Chicago Tribune health reporter.
Officials struggle with timing of outbreak alerts
Filed under: Government, Health data, Health journalism, Hospitals, Hot Health Headline, Public health, Public records
The Redding (Calif.) Record Searchlight’s Ryan Sabalow put together a local take on ongoing inconsistencies in how local health departments release outbreak-related information to the public.
Sabalow brings the story home with examples from local health departments and the story of a child who died from bacterial meningitis in an area where a previous case had gone unannounced. In the first story, Sabalow explains the nuances of when and how certain health departments choose to disclose infections, and in the second he shows just how messy and inconsistent those standards can be in practice.
At issue is the struggle to find a balance between transparency and panic-causing cries of “wolf.” It’s an issue AHCJ has tackled before, most notably during the 2009 H1N1 outbreak when disclosure varied wildly from department to department.
Felice J. Freyer, a health reporter at the Providence Journal in Rhode Island who heads the Association of Health Care Journalists’ Right to Know Committee, said a perception of secrecy is the last thing health officials need when they’re urging people to take steps to protect themselves from a disease.
“You can’t sustain the public’s trust if you run and hide,” Freyer said. “That’s what it looks like, whether that’s what’s happening or not.”
Freyer said AHCJ members have been in talks with the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials. The nonprofit health organization has agreed to meet with the AHCJ to determine whether a nonbinding set of national guidelines can be developed.
Somewhere at the other end of the spectrum is Dr. Rob Hamilton, head of a Redding hospital’s emergency department.
Hamilton said he empathizes with public health officials in holding back until a case is confirmed.
One false alarm about a suspected meningitis case could potentially flood an already crowded emergency medical system with dozens of scared patients who don’t have meningitis but are demanding expensive, potentially dangerous and time-consuming spinal taps, he said.
Related
Kim Archer of the Tulsa World has been covering an outbreak of meningitis that has killed two children and made at least five others sick. She talked to school and health officials about the public health response to the outbreak and compiled a timeline of the outbreak and response.
Challenges of rural health care get a closer look
David Wahlberg, the health and medicine reporter at the Wisconsin State Journal, has embarked on a project to examine “the challenges of providing health care services to rural communities.”
The first piece of the series focuses on the doctor shortage in rural areas as well as programs intended to help full the gap. There are a number of sidebars about aspects of the doctor shortage, including one about a hospital that employs a doctor with a felony conviction. That hospital’s CEO says, “But in a rural market like this, you can’t not consider keeping him.”
The second piece looks at the aspects of rural life that hinder good quality, consistent health care. The story cites doctor shortages, hospitals that don’t perform specialized services and an abundance of patients who are poor, elderly or have little or no insurance as factors that make health care in rural areas precarious.
The fragile, fragmented care in rural settings is thought to be responsible for a startling mortality gap nationwide: The death rate, adjusted for age, dropped only slightly in rural America the past two decades while declining significantly in cities, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Wahlberg said in an e-mail that he expects future installments to come roughly once a month.
Food makes up a quarter of Calif. household waste
California Watch wraps up its three-part series on hunger in that state with a look at how much food is wasted and why.
Reporters found that tons of food goes to waste when restaurants dump it rather than donate it to distribution centers, when farmers plow over fruits and and vegetables in the fields and when grocery stores throw away food.
Discarded food represents a quarter of all waste tossed away by California households.
The project, in collaboration with the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at USC, includes a look at the five largest food retailers and whether they donate to food banks and other distribution centers.
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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
