Missouri data disclosure details infection fight
Filed under: Health data, Health journalism, Hospitals, Hot Health Headline, Public health, Public records, Studies, Tools
Missouri law requires hospitals to disclose infection rates for intensive care and certain surgeries. It doesn’t keep that data around for long, but St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter Jim Doyle still managed to review data from 2005 to 2009.
Robots sanitize an ICU room by spraying hydrogen peroxide vapor into the air at St. John’s Mercy Medical Center.
He found that while numerous local hospitals lagged behind national infection rates, most were improving. A story that could have been a dire assessment of health care-associated infections instead became (mostly) a profile of local hospitals’ drive to cut down on the transmission of such infections. He doesn’t draw a clean line between the state’s monitoring and increased anti-infection efforts, but it’s tempting to read between the lines.
Doyle’s second installment continues the theme, discussing the aggressive, nonstop effort that is required to contain drug-resistant bacteria. Measures range from checklists to room-enveloping antibacterial vapors.
Missouri’s disclosure laws are an important step toward infection fighting, Doyle found, but their narrow definition allows hospitals some wiggle room and may miss serious systemic issues. Speaking of systemic issues, I highly recommend Doyle’s sidebar on why Missouri infection data is so hard to keep around.
Forum offers stats on well-being of elderly
Filed under: Government, Health data, Health journalism, Studies, Tools
AgingStats.gov is an often-overlooked federal clearinghouse of aging-related data from the Federal Interagency Forum on Age-Related Statistics. It focuses on summary reports.
Its latest effort, Older Americans 2010: Key Indicators of Well-Being (174-page PDF), summarizes 37 key indicators it believes are broadly relevant and easy to understand. By my count, 24 of those are explicitly health-related.
Everything is illustrated with an abundance of charts and maps, and an emphasis on bulleted summary and analysis helps keep things accessible. Those looking for a deeper dive into the summary numbers will want to head to the appendix.
As part of its health sections, the report contains seven “Health Status” indicators, including chronic health conditions, depressive symptoms, sensory impairments and oral health, and functional limitations.
One example:
It also includes eight “Health Risks and Behaviors” – things like diet, air quality, mammography and vaccinations – and nine “Health Care” indicators, including expenditures, prescription drugs and residential services.
The forum, which nobody seems to refer to by the acronym FIFARS, has been around since 1986. Participants include the Census Bureau, a number of Health and Human Services departments (AHRQ, CMS, NCHS and others), HUD, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the EPA, the Office of Management and Budget, and the Social Security Administration.
Thanks to AHCJ member Eileen Beal for suggesting this as a tool other members might find helpful.
FDA site tracks post-approval drug dangers
Thanks to new requirements, the FDA is now publishing updates on its safety evaluations of drugs that are already on the market. The evaluations get posted after the drug has been on the market for 18 months, or after 10,000 people have used it. It only includes drugs approved since Sept. 27, 2007.
The site also includes a full list of those drugs flagged by the FDA for various reasons, including ongoing safety alerts. Simply click on any drug in the list to find out what problems were identified and what action has been taken.
(Hat tip to The Plain Dealer’s Diane Suchetka)
Frugal Minnesota splurges on lower backs
Filed under: Health data, Health journalism, Health policy, Hospitals, Hot Health Headline, Public health, Studies, Tools
For physicians and patients, treating lower back pain is an exercise in restraint and patience. According to federal guidelines, such pain usually resolves itself within six weeks with minimum intervention, so it’s often a matter of resisting the temptation to order a $500 MRI within that time window. And in Minnesota, a state known for its health-care-related moderation, that temptation seems to be too much.
As the Christopher Snowbeck of the St. Paul Pioneer Press reports, Minnesota doctors are worse than the national average when it comes to giving lower back pain patients MRIs without exploring cheaper alternatives. And in the land of Lake Wobegon, being below average is a big deal. The conclusions come from Hospital Compare’s newly released 2008 outcomes data. To learn more about this data, check out AHCJ’s recent conference call on the subject.
For some help reading between the lines of Snowbeck’s story (and the Hospital Compare data), see Gary Schwizter’s recent blog post on the subject; he doesn’t mince words.
The story includes other excuses from local providers along the lines of “the data are outdated…we’ve changed…we’re better now…that can’t be right…it’s not us!” When have you ever seen a story on health care data that didn’t have these predictable reactions? It reminds me of The Tobacco Institute continually rejecting any new finding that showed new harms from smoking. When you don’t like the data, damn the data. For most of the history of medicine we had no outcomes data to show patterns of practice or what happens to people over time. Now that we’re starting to collect some such data, vested interests find that information is a menacing thing.
For more about treatment of back pain, particularly how much money is spent on it, see the just-released “Back Problems: Use and Expenditures for the U.S. Adult Population, 2007” (PDF) from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
Guide focuses on diversity in services for the aging
This is a guest post by independent journalist Eileen Beal, that she wrote at my invitation.
Don’t let the title deter you from ordering or downloading a copy of “A Toolkit for Serving Diverse Communities.”
The easy-to-read guide, by the Administration on Aging (AoA), does two things: it outlines the challenges agencies and organizations providing community services face as the elderly population grows and becomes more diverse and it gives you excellent backgrounding on the Aging Services Network.
This network headed by AoA (a division of the HHS) includes:
- 56 State Units (departments) on Aging (the “state” thing is a misnomer, since this arm of the network includes U.S. territories, Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia)
- 655 Area Agencies on Aging (AAA), which are funded through AoA and State Units; coordinate services and programs in their planning and service “area;” and are often the major funder for the agencies and organizations that provide services (such as meals-on-wheels, adult day care programs, the meals and exercise programs at senior centers, etc.)
- 238 tribal and native Hawaiian organizations (representing 302 groups), which do the same thing as AAAs
- more than 28,000 service providers/organizations that actually do the hands-on delivery of services and programs mentioned above (For more information, see item 1 below.)
The guide is in two parts. Part I gives you a good understanding of how social service agencies are organized and the staff/organizational culture, client, and funding challenges agencies and programs are facing. Part II is appendices. All are interesting, but you’ll get the most bang for your reading buck from:
- Appendices A and E explain how programs are planned, designed and implemented
- Appendix D has excellent “what would you do” scenarios that will help you frame questions when you are doing interviews
- Appendix E has good lists of factors influencing culture and ethnicity
- Appendix G provides an excellent list of on-line resources current data and diverse populations
To order a copy of the guide, call Evelyn at 202-619-0724 or you can download it.
Related resources
- National Association of State Units on Aging
- National Council on Aging (publications) and National Council on Aging (policy)
Project offers guide on access to autopsy records
The Marion Brechner Citizen Access Project at the University of Florida College of Communications has posted an online guide to access to autopsy records, which are not open records in about half the states and the District of Columbia, according to Ana-Klara Anderson, J.D., Ph.D.
Where the records are public, they are mired in exemptions that limit public access. Anderson, writing for Quill, the magazine of the Society of Professional Journalists, points out that autopsy records are important for reporting on public health and safety issues as well as crime and other issues.
Anderson, a former researcher for the Marion Brechner Citizen Access Project and a member of the SPJ Freedom of Information Committee, provides more details about exemptions and case law on the subject.
CDC says monitoring system finds no ill from spill
Filed under: Government, Health data, Hot Health Headline, Public health, Tools
The CDC has two major monitoring programs active in the Gulf of Mexico during the spill: The National Poison Data System and Biosense.
The National Poison Data System tracks calls to American poison centers. As of July 12, it had tracked 1,221 calls regarding the spill, 722 of which regarded exposure to spill-related toxins such as oil, dispersant or food contaminants. The other 499 calls came from folks seeking information about the health effects of the spill. The majority of the calls have come from the gulf states, but some originated from as far away as California, Michigan and Massachusetts.
Biosense is a public health tool that tracks real-time changes in a population’s health status. Among other things, it tracks more than 80 health facilities on the Gulf Coast and provides states affected by the spill with daily updates. According to the latest available data, it has “found no trends in the number of illnesses and injuries that would require further public health investigation.”
In addition to focusing resources of these two national programs, the CDC has collected state public health monitoring resources from Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.
Rafael Olmeda of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel points out that the CDC has posted “Gulf Oil Spill Information for Pregnant Women,” which generally advises everyone to stay away from oil spill affected areas.
Related
- Tip sheet: reporting on the intersection of health, environment
- Mental health impact of the BP spill multiplies
- Resources for reporting on health and the oil spill
- CDC Emergency Response and Preparedness
- A recent Dart Centre Europe panel looked at covering the human consequences of environmental disaster.
- Grief in the Gulf: Tanya Paperny writes about the challenge of reporting a slow-motion disaster.
- Dart Center resources for covering the Deepwater Horizon Spill
ER visits caused by nonmedical use of opioids double in 5 years
Filed under: Health data, Hot Health Headline, Tools
The latest Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report from the CDC focuses on the rapid increase of emergency department visits caused by the abuse and misuse of prescription painkillers. The report is based on a review of the five most recent years of data from the Drug Abuse Warning Network.
DAWN’s national estimates are based on a 220-hospital sample. According to DAWN, “nonmedical use” means “taking a higher-than-recommended dose, taking a drug prescribed for another person, drug-facilitated assault, or documented misuse or abuse, all of which must be documented in the medical record.”
The big takeaway?
… the estimated number of ED visits for nonmedical use of opioid analgesics increased 111% during 2004-2008 (from 144,600 to 305,900 visits) and increased 29% during 2007–2008. The highest numbers of ED visits were recorded for oxycodone, hydrocodone, and methadone, all of which showed statistically significant increases during the 5-year period.
It’s a number-heavy report, so I’ve put together a quick overview with the help of the DAWN and MMWR reviews, as well as this DAWN report. You’ll find it below.
HHS shows off tools marrying health, data
Filed under: Health data, Public health, Public records, Tools
This morning’s HHS briefing about the new Community Health Data Initiative, part of the Open Government Initiative, covered a lot of ground, with a number of web application developers showing off what they’ve done with government health data. Among the highlights for me:
Microsoft has launched Bing Health Maps
It’s a little clunky to access now, but we’ll forgive Bing since the application was launched early this morning. Go to http://www.bing.com/maps/explore/ and look for the “Map Apps” button at the bottom of the page. Click on that and, on the next screen, choose Bing Health Maps. From there, you can pick a state and then community health indicators. Those indicators include birth measures, death measures and health risk factors. An overlay on the map shows the results and you can click on specific areas to delve further into the numbers.
Visualizing the data may make it easier to spot some health disparities that might deserve a closer look and it’s an easy way to get numbers on some health measures for an area. I am disappointed that there doesn’t appear to be an option to embed the health maps.
TechCrunch points out that Bing Health Maps are similar to Google’s Flu Maps.
Google Fusion Tables make health data accessible
Not to be outdone, Google demonstrated how its Fusion Tables - “a database service in the cloud” - could be used with HHS data about hospitals. In the example, you can zoom in on a hospital and get stats on whether it is “heart friendly” and “people friendly.”
Tech helps asthma management
Another application gathers data on where and when people are when they suffer asthma symptoms. Asthmapolis showed how its product, the Spiroscout, uses GPS to track the time and geographic location of symptoms. The data can then be displayed and, presumably, patterns can be detected. Asthmapolis produced a video to explain a little more.
Analyze the U.S.
Palantir Technologies announced http://AnalyzeThe.US which uses tools to explore data released by the government as well as datasets compiled by nonprofits and policy centers, in areas that include federal spending, contracting, lobbying, and campaign finance.
And more …
Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced that HHS will release a Health Indicators Warehouse by the end of the year that will have “currently available and new HHS data on national, state, regional, and county health performance – on indicators such as rates of smoking, obesity, diabetes, access to healthy food, utilization of health care services, etc. – in an easy-to-use ‘one stop data shop.’”
According to the HHS press release, there were 16 applications presented at today’s forum. I’m hopeful that HHS will find a better way to present such things before future announcements. I spent much of my time during the webcast trying to find the web sites and applications that were being demonstrated, and thus missing parts of the discussion. Releasing a list of URLs in advance or providing them via Twitter during the webcast would have helped keep my attention on what was being presented.
In the end, the release of more data is always a good thing and making it accessible to as many people as possible is even better. But journalists will probably still want the underlying datasets so they can perform their own detailed analysis of the data.
For more about some of the applications demonstrated, see “Making community health information as useful as weather data” from Alex Howard.
Site lists hundreds of potential freelance outlets
Biotechmedia.com bills itself as a “marketing resource site for the medical, pharmaceutical, biotech and veterinary industries,” but AHCJ member Eileen Beal points out that it’s also a fantastic reference for freelancers. On the site, you’ll find hundreds and hundreds of health-related trade publications and journals, from “Cosmetic/Personal Care Packaging” to “Lab Automation & Robotics.” Savvy writers will see potential outlets everywhere on the page.
At the very least, the site’s worth a quick scan, if only to get a better impression of just how many health-related publications are out there. Biotechmedia’s descriptions of each publication tend toward “here’s how much you’d pay for a subscriber list,” but the links and titles alone are enough to broaden horizons and generate ideas.
The case for freelancing with trade publications
Health Journalism 2010 attendee L. Michael Posey, R.Ph., is editorial director of periodicals at the American Pharmacists Association, as well as a graduate student in the University of Georgia Health and Medical Journalism Program. On his blog, Oconee County Health Beat, Posey explains to journalists both why they should want to freelance for trade publications and how to go about doing so.
Related
Directory of freelance health journalists - AHCJ members can be listed in this directory for free. Editors are encouraged to use it to find the right person for their assignment.
-
Spend a week at the CDC studying public health, meeting sources. Apply for the AHCJ-CDC Health Journalism Fellowships today!
- Reporting on the intersection of health, environment
- Tip sheet: Covering cuts to Medicare reimbursements
- Briefing: Reporting on health reform between now and 2014
- Covering high-risk insurance pools: Tips for reporters
- Health care reform has passed: What's next?
- Health and education: Covering these intersecting beats
- Reporting on the business of health care
- Health reporting resources for journalists on state and local government beats
