Reporters: Federal public affairs staffers block access to information
Filed under: Government, Health journalism, Public health, Public records
Reporters who cover federal government agencies say they face impediments to getting information to the public because of interference from public affairs officers, according to a survey released by the Society of Professional Journalists. [Press release]
About 70 percent of the 146 journalists who responded to the survey said they had a positive relationship with the public information officers with whom they work, and most reported that officers quickly respond to their queries most of the time.
However, overwhelmingly, comments from the surveyed journalists indicated increasing frustration at what they perceive as efforts by agencies to control the message to the public. “PAOs tend to make up information,” stated one respondent. “You can never trust the information they provide. They make our jobs almost impossible and they treat journalists with barely any professionalism.”
Carolyn S. Carlson, lead author of “Mediated Access: Journalists’ Perceptions of Federal Public Information Officer Media Control,” notes that reporters are “running into interference rather than assistance from the very people hired by the government to help them. Public affairs officers need to facilitate media coverage, not interfere or block it.”
The survey reveals that reporters have to get approval from public affairs officials before interviewing sources, something AHCJ and other journalism groups have protested in the past, and some agencies are not allowing interviews of employees. About 84 percent reported their interviews have been monitored by PIOs, another issue AHCJ has written about.
Journalists agreed that government control over who is interviewed is a form of censorship and that the public is not getting vital information as a result of these controls.
The survey was conducted by Carlson, an assistant professor of communication at Kennesaw State University in Kennesaw, Ga., and David Cuillier, director of the School of Journalism at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Ariz., on behalf of the SPJ Freedom of Information Committee, of which both are members. They were assisted by Kennesaw journalism student Lindsay Tulkoff.
Tell us about your experiences with HHS
Tomorrow AHCJ will hold our quarterly conference call with the HHS media office. This usually includes a summary of our members’ experiences with the various HHS media offices (CDC, FDA, NIH, NIDA, CMS, etc), as well as discussion of specific issues.
As always, we depend on you to inform these discussions. Have you interacted with HHS or any of its divisions in recent months? Felice Freyer, chair of AHCJ’s Right to Know Committee, would like to hear from AHCJ members. Please send her a quick note describing what happened, whether it was positive or negative. Are there any concerns you’d like us to raise with them? Please send your comments to felice.freyer@cox.net or share them in the comments below.
Disciplined doctors in Conn. continue to get drug industry payments
Filed under: Conflicts of interest, Hot Health Headline
Lisa Chedekel of the Connecticut Health I-Team reports that, even as doctors are investigated and disciplined for violating medical conduct rules – including over-prescribing – they have collected thousands of dollars from pharmaceutical companies for meals, speaking or consulting work.
Chedekel used records from Connecticut’s Department of Public Health and public disclosures from pharmaceutical manufacturers: “A check of physician records shows about a dozen Connecticut doctors receiving drug company benefits either shortly before or after being sanctioned by the state for various offenses.”
Her reporting reveals a doctor received payments from three drug companies while he was being investigated for allegations that he over-medicated patients. Some of the payments continued after his license was suspended. Another doctor got payments from four companies while “federal prosecutors were investigating allegations that he wrote out 11 illegal prescriptions for controlled substances.”
Other doctors reaping the benefits from drug companies were disciplined for things that included failing to provide proper post-operative care, referring a patient for an MRI despite the fact the patient had a pacemaker, over-prescribing narcotics, allowing unlicensed employees to practice medicine and nursing and more.
Currently a dozen pharmaceutical manufacturers publicly disclose their payments to physicians. As Chedekel points out, many do so as the result of legal settlements with the government. Beginning in September 2013, such payments will be posted online in accordance with the Physician Payment Sunshine Act, though it’s not yet clear exactly how the law will be implemented.
Chedekel notes that ProPublica’s Dollars for Docs investigation also has revealed payments to doctors who had been accused of professional misconduct, had been disciplined or lacked credentials.
Welcome AHCJ’s newest members!
Please welcome AHCJ’s newest members. All new members are welcome to stop by this post’s comment section to introduce themselves.
- Helen Adamopoulos, web producer, The Medicare News Group, Glencoe, Ill. (@helenadamop)
- Cynthia Dizikes, reporter, Chicago Tribune, Chicago
- Judit Illes, student, Columbia University, New York
- Ketil Johnsen, journalist, Bergens Tidende, Bergen, Norway
- Nathanael Johnson, health editor, mycirQle, San Francisco, (@savortoothtiger)
- Theodoric Meyer, student, Columbia University, New York
- Bill Silberg, director of communications, Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, Washington, D.C. (@bsilberg)
- Donald Sjoerdsma, web producer, The Medicare News Group, Glencoe, Ill.
- Kimber Solana, web producer, The Medicare News Group, Glencoe, Ill. (@kimbersolana)
- Laurie Stoneham, senior editor, oncology channel, dailyRx.com, Louisville, Ky.
- Alison Szot, senior web editor, The Medicare News Group, Glencoe, Ill.
- Joy Taylor, editor, Allhealthcarejobs.com, Urbandale, Iowa
- Claudia Townsend, editor, health, science & environment, The Washington Post, Washington, D.C.
- Alvin Tran, student, Emory University, Atlanta
If you haven’t joined yet, see what member benefits you’re missing out on: Access to more than 50 journals and databases, tip sheets and articles from your colleagues on how they’ve reported stories, conferences, workshops, online training, reporting guides and more. Join AHCJ today to get a wealth of support and tools to help you.
AHCJ member news: The latest on awards, new assignments and more
Members of AHCJ have been busy! Here’s the latest update on our members who have won awards, taken new jobs and have other news of interest.
Beryl Lieff Benderly is this year’s winner of the IEEE-USA Award for Distinguished Literary Contributions Furthering the Public Understanding of the Profession (of engineering) for a cover story on biomedical engineering she did for Prism magazine, for which she is a contributing editor.
Sean Carr, formerly the Washington bureau manager for A.M. Best’s News Service, joined SNL Financial, a global news service, as a senior reporter covering insurance and financial services.
Robert Davis, president and editor-in-chief of Everwell, a health video website, has released his book, “Coffee Is Good for You,” with Penguin/Perigree.
Katherine Eban, an independent journalist who writes for Self, Vanity Fair and other national titles, has recently contracted with Fortune as a contributing writer. She will write four long-form investigative pieces each year, which will focus predominantly on pharmaceutical, medical or public health issues.
Allyn Gaestel, an independent journalist based in Philadelphia, was awarded a Kaiser Media Fellowship to work at The Philadelphia Inquirer over the summer.
Kenny Goldberg, a health reporter with KPBS news, won a Golden Mike award in the category of Best Light Feature from the Radio Television News Association of Southern California for his television piece on wheelchair dancing.
Tara Haelle, a graduate student at the University of Texas-Austin, began writing for DailyRX.com as a condition leader for prenatal, sleep and nutrition issues. She also launched a blog of health and science news for moms called Red Wine & Apple Sauce. She is on track to complete her master’s report for graduate school this spring, which will tellsthe stories of people affected by vaccine-preventable diseases through journalistic features and photographic portraits.
Harriet Hodgson, an independent journalist and author of 30 books, has been appointed as a forum editor for the Open to Hope Foundation. Hodgson will respond to posts about the death of an adult child, something she has experienced.
Jodie Jackson Jr., reporter and blogger at the Columbia (Mo.) Daily Tribune, was awarded second place in the Missouri Associated Press Media Editors 2011 news writing contest. The award was in the community affairs/public interest category for “Patients in Peril?” He also received a 2011 Missouri Public Health Association media award for significant contributions to health education in the state.
Steve Jacob’s book, “Health Care in 2020,” was published in January. Jacob is an independent journalist from Culleyville, Texas.
Richard M. Kirkner has been named editor-in-chief of Optometry Times, an Advanstar publication. A 20-year veteran of health care media, Kirkner will work out of his Phoenixville, Pa., office and report to the Advanstar Medical Communications Group editorial headquarters in North Olmstead, Ohio.
Steven Z. Kussin, M.D., F.A.C.P., an independent journalist based in Clinton, N.Y., is the founder and director of The Shared Decision Center, a patient advocacy center dedicated to educating patients about alternative approaches to their medical problems. Kussin’s book, “Doctor, Your Patient Will See You Now,” was also named amongst top 10 health titles of the year by Booklist.
Independent journalist Claudia Perry started a three-month training program with The Heartland Group in Chicago. She is working on a memoir about living with chronic conditions.
André Picard, longtime health reporter at Toronto’s Globe and Mail, was awarded the College of Family Physicians of Canada Lectureship Prize. It is the first time a non-physician has been honored. Picard donated the $15,000 cash portion of the award to Médecins Sans Frontières. In November, Picard also received the National Child Day Award from the Canadian Institute for Child Health for his “dedication to improving the health of children.”
Yanick Rice Lamb, associate publisher/editorial director of Heart and Soul magazine, participated in the Cancer Issues Fellowship sponsored by the National Press Foundation in December and the Knight Digital Media Center’s workshop at the University of California, Berkeley, in January. She was recently accepted into April’s Kiplinger Program in Public Affairs Reporting at Ohio State University. Rice Lamb was invited to join the National Advisory Council of the Center for Health Media and Policy at Hunter College.
Bryan Thompson, a health reporter at Kansas Public Radio, recently completed the National Public Radio/Kaiser Health News project, “Health Care In The States.” This workshop, which deepened the 24 participants’ understanding of issues surrounding the Affordable Care Act, included a week of intensive training in Washington and is followed by a four-month mentorship with editors from NPR and KHN.
San Francisco-based independent journalist Laurie Udesky published an article about dangerous prescription drugs in nursing homes for The Bay Citizen that also appeared in The New York Times.
Harriet Washington, an independent journalist from Albany, N.Y., published her book, “Deadly Monopolies: The Shocking Corporate Takeover of Life Itself and the Consequences for Your Health and Our Medical Future,” with Doubleday in November.
Share your news
If you have news to share about a new job, fellowship, award or other accomplishment, please send us a note about it to info@healthjournalism.org to be featured in a future Covering Health post and in HealthBeat, AHCJ’s printed newsletter.
Polk Award recognizes reporting on unusual Medicare claims, reimbursements
AHCJ member Christina Jewett, a reporter at California Watch, was honored alongside her colleagues, Lance Williams and Steven K. Doig, with the George Polk Award in Medical Reporting for her work on “Decoding Prime,” a yearlong investigative series that exposed how a California-based hospital chain billed Medicare for rare conditions and in turn banked on huge bonus payments.
To do this, the team analyzed more than 51 million hospital admissions records from 2005 through 2010. It also unveiled stories from doctors, nurses and medical coders who were at odds with the chain’s practices.
Earlier:
Reporters uncover Calif. chain’s systematic upcoding
AHCJ calls for accessible reporting of physician payments
Filed under: Conflicts of interest, Government, Health policy, Pharmaceuticals, Public records
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services should create an easily usable and searchable database when it publishes information from drug and device makers about payments to physicians, according to comments (PDF) submitted by the Association of Health Care Journalists on proposed rules for carrying out the Physician Payment Sunshine Act.
The act will open a window on financial relationships between physicians and industry. Starting in 2013, pharmaceutical and device manufacturers must report to CMS any “transfer of value” worth more than $10 to a physician, and CMS will post the information online.
“Overall, we believe your regulations would faithfully enact the provisions of the Payment Sunshine Act,” AHCJ President Charles Ornstein wrote. “To serve its purpose, the information must be easily accessible to anyone who wants to know about an individual doctor or doctors in a community, as well as for researchers and reporters seeking a larger view.”
The law comes in response to growing concerns that industry payments to doctors can skew prescribing decisions and encourage use of brand-name drugs.
AHCJ made several specific recommendations: provide unique identifiers for each physician, note when a company updates its information, include gifts of textbooks and educational materials in the reporting requirements, and include partial data from 2012.
Additionally, the association noted that because the law applies exclusively to physicians, companies do not have to disclose payments to nurse practitioners and physician assistants. AHCJ urged CMS to consider reporting payments to non-physician prescribers who work in group practices with physicians.
Related
The Pew Prescription Project has a collection of documents about the Physician Payment Sunshine Act.
Medical, support network lacking for returning National Guard, reservists
National Guardsmen and reservists returning from duty in Iraq and Afghanistan “have been hastily channeled through a post-deployment process that has been plagued with difficulties, including reliance on self-reporting to identify health problems,” according to an investigation by graduate students in Northwestern University’s Medill School.
Photo by The National Guard via Flickr
“Hidden Surge” found members of the National Guard must navigate disparate health care and support providers, made more difficult by the fact that many of them live in rural areas. Three of the stories were published in The Washington Post.
The reporters also found that, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, most reservists were medically unready to deploy – an assessment made by a private contractor. “More than 2,400 Army Reserve soldiers were held back, at least temporarily, because of inaccurate assessments by the contractor, according to data provided by the Army Reserve Medical Command.”
Meanwhile, some soldiers with behavioral problems that could be aggravated by the stress of deployment and combat were improperly sent overseas.
The project, done by 10 students, was directed by faculty member Josh Meyer, who covered national security for the Los Angeles Times for 20 years. Students used video and interactive graphics to help tell the stories. A “How We Did It” sidebar says the students interviewed more than 150 people, reviewed documents and reports and traveled to nine states to do the reporting.
According to a press release, the Hidden Surge project is part of Medill’s National Security Journalism Initiative, funded by the McCormick Foundation.
Senators request inquiry into state medical boards
Three senators are asking the inspector general of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to investigate the oversight provided by state medical boards after several recent media reports questioning the supervision of physicians in the country.
Senators Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Max Baucus (D-Mont.) sent a letter to Daniel Levinson, HHS inspector general, on Wednesday, calling on his office to undertake the review and assess the quality of state boards on a variety of levels.
The senators cited recent reports in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the St. Louis Post Dispatch and the New Haven Independent Connecticut Health Investigative Team,* all of which pointed to lax oversight of doctors in their states.
“Since the HHS-OIG has not issued a comprehensive evaluation of state medical boards in more than 15 years, it is critical that the HHS-OIG evaluate the effectiveness of state medical boards and provide recommendations to enhance their organizations’ efforts within each state and across state boundaries,” they wrote. “With the adoption of advanced medical technologies, such as teleradiology, and an increase in physicians holding medical licenses in two or more states, it is becoming increasingly important that states issue timely board actions and coordinate licensure actions to protect the public from unqualified or marginally proficient practitioners.”
The letter asks the inspector general to suggest ways to improve and to determine whether sanctions by Medicare against doctors are being reported to state medical boards and to the National Practitioner Data Bank, a federally run database of discipline imposed against doctors and other health professionals.
As readers of this blog know, AHCJ has taken a leadership role in criticizing the Obama administration for restricting reporters’ access to a public version of the National Practitioner Data Bank, used by the media to write stories such as those highlighted in the letter.
AHCJ regularly holds training sessions for members on how to better cover the quality of health professionals in their states.
* Correction: The senators’ letter incorrectly cites the New Haven Independent for stories that were actually written by Lisa Chedekel of the Connecticut Health Investigative Team, a nonprofit project of the Online Journalism Project.
CMS-ordered report, withheld by hospital, reveals hundreds of deficiencies
Filed under: Hospitals, Hot Health Headline, Public health, Public records
When Ryan McNeill of The Dallas Morning News recently wrote for AHCJ about that paper’s investigation into patient care and safety at Parkland Memorial Hospital, he noted that the institution narrowly avoided being shut down by the federal government by agreeing to a rare form of oversight.
That oversight included a requirement that the hospital undergo outside monitoring that was carried out by the Alvarez & Marsal Healthcare Industry Group and paid for with about $7 million in taxpayer money.
When Parkland received the federally mandated report, dated Feb. 2, its governing board refused to release it to the public, “citing a fear that it could be used against the embattled public facility in court.”
Now we know why it was loathe for people to see its contents.
The Dallas Morning News has independently obtained a copy of the report and posted it online. It details hundreds of problems throughout the hospital.
Among the findings: Patient rooms were found to contain overflowing trash bins, excrement and blood. Hundreds of medications were improperly administered to patients. Dozens of beds remained empty despite crushes of patients seeking emergency care. Senior leaders kept critical information from the hospital’s board of managers. One patient died, apparently after receiving a drug without doctors’ orders.
Even after the hospital came under scrutiny, patients continued to be harmed, according to the 315-page report: “Considering that Parkland knows it has been under intense scrutiny by the State, CMS and the ICE for the past few months, the number of negative patient events that have occurred just since November 8, 2011 is surprising.”
Perhaps the most disturbing thing about the report is the conclusion that hospital employees do not share a sense of urgency and that “Large parts of the organization still operate in a business-as-usual mode.”
A CMS representative described the report as a “chilling account.” Monitors said Parkland’s “culture has failed in accountability, from top to bottom.” A Morning News editorial says the report is “scathing in its indictment of a once-respected safety-net hospital.”
Patients’ ‘leap of faith’ make stories possible, prompt changes
Filed under: Health journalism, Hot Health Headline
Pamela Fayerman of The Vancouver Sun has been writing about a genetic counselor who has been “relieved of her duties” at the BC Cancer Agency, part of the Provincial Health Services Authority, for allegedly failing to document cases.
Part of the counselor’s duties included making arrangements for genetic testing for people who fit the criteria for having a predisposition to cancer. But patients told Fayerman that “tardiness and lack of communication was part of a disturbing pattern” that led to the personnel action.
Fayerman, through one woman’s story, explains how the delays and lack of communication have affected patients and their families and the decisions they have made while waiting for testing. In the case of one patient:
If she had received results of genetic testing right after being diagnosed, she said, she would have been in a better position to make a decision about having her breasts removed or whether a lumpectomy (which she had) was sufficient. And her other organs might have been spared from damage due to chemotherapy treatment, she says. In addition, she would know sooner about whether her daughter faces an increased risk of breast cancer.
In a blog post, Fayerman says the stories wouldn’t have happened if patients had not called her to tell her their stories. She discusses the “leap of faith” such sources must make and how she handles patients who decide to step forward and share their stories publicly.
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