AHCJ asks Supreme Court to permit broadcast of health reform arguments
Filed under: Government, Health care reform, Public records
AHCJ has asked Chief Justice John G. Roberts of the U.S. Supreme Court to permit live audio and video coverage of the oral arguments next March in the case challenging congressional authority to mandate health insurance coverage and other provisions of the Affordable Care Act.
The Court has long permitted print journalists to cover its proceedings and, more recently, began offering time-delayed audio recordings of oral arguments. But AHCJ is pushing for real time audio and video coverage in this case, due to the historic significance of this case and potential impact on millions of Americans.
In the letter to Chief Justice Roberts, AHCJ contends that these provisions are inadequate for such a historic case with potentially sweeping impact on the health care system and millions of Americans.
The Radio Television Digital News Association has filed a similar request with the high court, as has C-SPAN and U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa. The New York Times weighed in with an editorial last week.
Journalism organizations offer data government blocked from public
Filed under: Government, Health data, Health journalism, Public records, Uncategorized
Another development in the protest by three key journalism groups to the Obama administration’s decision to block public access to a public database of physician discipline and malpractice: Now, Investigative Reporters and Editors, working with the Association of Health Care Journalists and the Society of Professional Journalists, has posted the data for download, free to the public.
The data are posted for the entire U.S. in the original text format with documentation. IRE has also made available state-by-state Excel spreadsheet files.
On Thursday, the groups sent a letter protesting the decision to pull offline a the Public Use File of the National Practitioner Data Bank. The government has made this file available online for years, and reporters have used it to call attention to lax oversight of physicians across the country.
The public version of the database does not identify physicians by name or address, but it does provide other useful information about hospital sanctions, malpractice payouts and state disciplinary actions against every doctor in the country.
“We applaud IRE for making this data available for free to the media, researchers and the public,” said Charles Ornstein, AHCJ’s president. “While the government has decided that this ‘public use file’ should no longer be public, our organizations believe that it continues to be a critical resource. I encourage reporters, even those who have never used it before, to look for stories within it now.”
Journalists have used the data for years to draw attention to troubled physicians and state inaction. Recent examples include the St. Louis Post Dispatch, the Duluth (Minn) News-Tribune and The Kansas City Star. Other examples over the years have included The Hartford (Conn.) Courant and the Raleigh, N.C., News & Observer.
The U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration threatened a reporter from The Kansas City Star with financial penalties if he proceeded to write a story about a local neurosurgeon using information he gleaned from the public version of the database on the agency’s website. The newspaper published its story anyway on Sept. 4. The doctor’s attorney complained to the agency, prompting officials to remove the database from its website on Sept. 1.
Several news outlets - The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Reuters and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch - are following the story.
Author sees need for more drug safety info for elderly
Writing a guest blog item for Scientific American, AHCJ member Laura Newman profiled the case of her mother to argue that health regulators and Congress should “back drug safety initiatives in the elderly,” noting that “people over age 75 are under-represented in clinical trials, leaving physicians in the dark as to safety.”
The particular case involved an often-prescribed drug to treat high cholesterol:
Even as my mother was in crisis, doctors told me that they were astounded that such a high-dose statin was given to a low-risk, frail, elderly women. By low-risk, she had no history of cardiovascular disease and she met the widely used and time-tested Framingham Risk Factor criteria. She did not smoke, had low-level, well-controlled hypertension, but a high cholesterol. I sensed deterioration months before she was diagnosed with rhabdomyolysis.
Her mother died within eight weeks after doctors diagnosed her with rhabdomyolysis, a life-threatening condition, and acute kidney failure.
New life expectancy data can add context
to reporting on local health
A new data release today from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation gives journalists some unique tools to help depict the health of a local population.
Emmanuela Gakidou, M.Sc., Ph.D., the director of education and training for IHME, told a Health Journalism 2010 audience that the institute was working on a project to show health information to the county level.
Just over a year later, the data allow the user to analyze life expectancy for every county in the United States and compare those numbers worldwide.
For example, the data could add context for a journalist following up on a tip from a speaker in an entirely different AHCJ event. In the recent Rural Health Journalism Workshop in St. Louis, Ellen Barnidge, Ph.D., M.P.H., of St. Louis University, discussed efforts in Missouri’s high-poverty Pemiscot County. A quick filter of the spreadsheet data shows men in that county share the same life expectancy – 68.5 – with Mauritius and Indonesia.
The data go back to 1987, allowing a journalist to look at changes over time as well for more than 3,000 counties.
Project researchers found that, while people in Japan, Canada and other nations are enjoying significant gains in life expectancy every year, most counties within the United States are falling behind.
The researchers, in collaboration with researchers at Imperial College London, found that between 2000 and 2007, more than 80 percent of counties fell in standing against the average of the 10 nations with the best life expectancies in the world, known as the international frontier.
Women have been especially affected. More than 850 counties in the U.S. have seen life expectancy remain static or go backwards for women since 1997.
The data also offers a breakdown of life expectancy by selected race – black and white – for each county.
The institute is an independent global research center at the University of Washington providing sound measurement of population health and the factors that determine health, as well as rigorous evaluation of health system and health program performance.
Journalists to provide input in talks on information released in public health emergencies
Filed under: Health journalism, Public health, Public records
Local, state and federal health officials from around the country will gather Friday with journalists to start developing guidelines on how much information health officials should release about deaths during a public health emergency or outbreak.
The meeting springs from concerns that AHCJ raised last year about the wide variations in the type of information disclosed when people died from H1N1.
Health officials in some states revealed such details as age and town of residence. Others merely acknowledged that someone somewhere had died. The discrepancies became the topic of news reports and may have led to public distrust of health authorities.
AHCJ approached the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, which agreed to sponsor a meeting. ASTHO invited representatives from the federal government, state health departments, county and municipal health departments, and public information officers, along with AHCJ. Fifteen people are expected to participate.
At the meeting, to be held at ASTHO headquarters in Crystal City, Va., participants plan to discuss the reasons for withholding and releasing certain types of information, and will try to agree on guiding principles for health officers as they face such decisions in the future.
“We are grateful to ASTHO for organizing and hosting this meeting,” said Charles Ornstein, AHCJ president. “We hope that it will lead to establishing minimum standards for what information should be released during public health emergencies or outbreaks, and that will result in better information for the public when it is most needed.”
AHCJ will be represented by Ornstein; Felice J. Freyer, AHCJ Right to Know Committee chair; and Rose Hoban of North Carolina Public Radio. Dr. Nicole Lurie, assistant secretary for preparedness and response, is scheduled to attend, and Gretchen Michael, ASPR director of communications, will lead the discussion.
Have you been denied information from your local or state health department during an outbreak or emergency? AHCJ wants to know so these issues can be raised during the meeting. Send your stories to felice.freyer@cox.net.
AHCJ members hear about latest health care data
Dozens of AHCJ members participated in a conference call today announcing data designed to track outpatient outcomes in hospitals. The data are part of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ Hospital Compare database.
The database gives statistics, by hospital, on:
- How efficiently facilities use imaging equipment and keep patients safe from exposure to potentially harmful, unnecessary radiation.
- Rates of outpatient MRIs for lower back pain before other treatment - a potential indicator of wasteful spending.
- Rates of outpatient re-tests after a screening mammogram, another indicator of overspending.
- How frequently outpatient departments gave patients “double” computed tomography (CT) scans when a single scan may be all that is needed.
- How well outpatients are treated for suspected heart attacks.
- How well outpatient surgical patients are protected from infection.
CMS also announced updated data showing hospitals’ rates of death and readmission for heart attack, heart failure and pneumonia patients.
AHCJ made an audio recording of the conference call. Follow this link to listen. A link to the CMS press release is on the agency’s website.
The slideshow below shows you how to access the new data:
AHCJ’s own featured as journalist to follow
A bow to AHCJ’s own Pia Christensen, featured in the May/June SPJ Quill as part of a “Journalists to Follow” feature. She runs this blog and the AHCJ website, among many other jobs.
The magazine featured “questions with a bunch of cool journalists and innovators. … These are people in the industry we think have great ideas and hold great potential. In short, you should pay attention to them — not only on Twitter, but in the wider industry. See what they do. Interact with them. Learn. Engage.”
The article gives Christensen’s insight into journalism’s struggle to move into its next successful business model and what future journalists might consider about the industry. “I hope we will be able to look back on this as a transformative time in journalism,” she said. “Without discounting the turbulence in the industry and the many jobs that have been lost, I think this period will be marked by new ways of reporting and telling stories in a variety of formats.”
Plus, she talked about the best practices of journalists using resources such as crowdsourcing and social media and how citizen journalists and “user-generated content” can fit into mainstream media.
Christensen manages the AHCJ website and oversaw its redesign; she developed the blog Covering Health. She also assists with the editing and production of AHCJ’s publications, including books, conference programs and the quarterly newsletter.
She previously was publications coordinator for Investigative Reporters and Editors, where she oversaw website content, edited IRE publications and assisted advertisers. She worked as a copy editor and an interactive producer at the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, a producer for Tribune Interactive, a sports copy editor for the Marin (Calif.) Independent Journal, and was job and internship coordinator at the Center for Integration and Improvement of Journalism in San Francisco. She telecommutes from Oklahoma.
Follow her on Twitter via AHCJ_Pia.
NTSB webcasting air ambulance safety hearing
Today the National Transportation Safety Board opened a four-day public hearing on the safety of helicopter emergency medical services operations. The NTSB is webcasting the hearing.
Through Friday, the NTSB will hear from technical experts about helicopter EMS operations, with the goal of better evaluating the factors that lead to accidents. Most witnesses will participate as part of small panels addressing particular safety issues.
(Photo by euthman via Flickr)
The witnesses will include including pilots, medical personnel, managers and Federal Aviation Administration officials who provide oversight. The board has posted an entire agenda and documents related to the proceedings.
In January 2006, the board issued a special investigation report on EMS operations. Many of the 55 EMS-related aviation accidents (fatal and non-fatal) that occurred between January 2002 and January 2005 could have been prevented with simple corrective actions, including oversight, flight risk evaluations, improved dispatch procedures, and the incorporation of available technologies, according to the NTSB.
The board issued four safety recommendations to the FAA but have not yet been fully implemented. Over the past 12 months, the board has investigated an additional nine fatal EMS accidents, which killed 35 people. The agency added helicopter EMS safety to its Most Wanted List of Transportation Safety Improvements.
The Baltimore Sun reported last year about air ambulance problems in Maryland and found that nationwide since 2003, many of the 26 fatal air ambulance crashes didn’t involve life or death missions.
A search for air ambulance crashes in the online version of the NTSB database is tricky. The search form doesn’t include the category, but typing in the box titled “Enter your word string below” will return records on the search terms “%air ambulance%” . The “%” is the wildcard symbol in the NTSB database. The search can also be limited by dates, state and other elements. Caution: Wildcard searches are notorious for picking up false matches. Check your results carefully.
AHCJ fellows hear from CDC experts
Filed under: Government, Health journalism, Member news
AHCJ’s Midwest fellows just spent three days in Atlanta meeting with experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Carter Center on a variety of health issues.
The Midwest fellows, from left to right: Elana Gordon, KCUR-Kansas City; Morgan Smith, KCTV-Kansas City; Alan Bavley, The Kansas City Star; Kathleen O’Dell, The Springfield (Mo.) News-Leader; Jeannine Koranda, The Wichita Eagle; Sandra Jordan, St. Louis American; Tammy Worth, independent journalist; Liz Zamora, KTKA-Topeka; Duane Schrag, Salina Journal.
Highlights included a discussion with CDC Director Julie Gerberding about efforts and goals to collaborate with other nations – addressing climate change, poverty, food safety, illness and disaster response. Another CDC priority focuses on reducing health and economic consequences of the leading causes of death and disability.
In CDC laboratories, fellows stood 30 feet away – through thick walls and windows – from deadly diseases from around the world. In a different lab, where viruses such as SARS were originally identified, fellows used an electron microscope to see slides of infected tissues and heard step-by-step explanations of lab procedures. Labs at the CDC’s Environmental Health Labs gave the fellows a chance to see the facilities where the CDC detects deadly toxins. In one special room, the fellows saw hundreds of cartons of cigarettes, ready for testing on sensitive equipment for levels of nicotine, tar and other ingredients.
The fellows visit included a tour of the CDC Director’s Emergency Operations Center, a secured series of rooms that allow CDC employees to monitor disasters or disease outbreaks and manage response.
CDC speakers unveiled a preview of an embargoed report on childhood injuries and deaths, including statistics by state. Other experts gave a primer on public health and the latest developments and research on vaccines, obesity, autism, climate change and genetic testing.
In a side trip to The Carter Center, fellows heard details of international efforts to eradicate diseases and improving mental health and toured the presidential museum.
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Join us in Atlanta
for Health Journalism 2012
Fellowship applications
due Feb. 27
New at HealthJournalism.org
- Data gives depth to investigation of patient safety
- What reporters should know about Alzheimer’s and related dementias
- Apply for fellowships to attend Health Journalism 2012
- AHCJ asks Supreme Court to permit broadcast of arguments in health reform case
- Tips for print, online journalists to embrace broadcast opportunities
- Numbers reveal how often, or how rarely, states check doctors’ disciplinary records
- 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
