Presidents of AHCJ, SPJ call for more openness from Obama administration
The presidents of the Association of Health Care Journalists and the Society of Professional Journalists published an op-ed in The Washington Post this morning, criticizing the lack of openness within the Obama administration and calling on officials to improve the flow of information to journalists and the public.
Charles Ornstein
“Democrats criticized the Bush administration for not making decisions based on the best science,” wrote AHCJ’s Charles Ornstein and SPJ’s Hagit Limor. “But the Obama administration now muzzles scientists and experts within federal agencies. When they are allowed to talk about important public health issues, a chaperone often supervises every word. These constraints keep the public from learning whether decisions are science-based or politically motivated.”
AHCJ has been very active in advocating for government openness, including a recent series of meetings in Washington, D.C., with officials from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and its related agencies. The organization has urged the FDA to re-examine a policy that prohibits reporters from sharing embargoed materials with sources before the embargo lifts for the purpose of obtaining outside comment and context. Board members from AHCJ also have worked with state health directors to encourage dissemination of more information during public health outbreaks.
“We remain hopeful that our ongoing conversations with HHS and its agencies will help improve the current climate, which isn’t working for journalists or the public,” Ornstein said. “Our members are interested in timely, meaningful responses to their questions, additional access to scientists and health experts, and speedier responses to their Freedom of Information Act requests.”
AHCJ leaders hold series of media access meetings with government officials
Filed under: Government, Health journalism, Public health
AHCJ representatives held a series of meetings in Washington, D.C., last week to press for government openness at the state and federal levels.
AHCJ President Charles Ornstein and board member Felice Freyer (chair of the 
organization’s Right to Know Committee) met with representatives of the Health and Human Services Department, the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, as well as 12 newly appointed state health directors organized by the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials.
The federal officials professed a commitment to openness, within limits, and promise to look into specific requests to further that goal. The state health officials, who heard a panel presentation about working effectively with reporters, were receptive and eager to talk with AHCJ about building relationships at the state level.
Read more for details from each meeting …
Related
Freyer will moderate a panel on this topic, “Right to know: Getting information from government agencies,” at Health Journalism 2011. The panel features Peter Ashkenaz, director of communications, FDA Office of Regulatory Affairs; Lisa Chedekel, senior writer and co-founder, Connecticut Health I-Team; Lucy A. Dalglish, executive director, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press; and Lilian Peake, M.D., M.P.H., director, Thomas Jefferson Health District, Virginia Department of Health.
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- Health journalists cite uneven disclosure of H1N1 deaths across country
- Major journalism groups demand agency end newsgathering constraints
- AHCJ objects to federal agencies’ handling of story embargo
- AHCJ calls on new administration to improve access to federal experts
Panel focuses on health reform anniversary
Filed under: Health care reform, Health journalism
Support for health reform has been complicated by political rhetoric and the general public’s lack of knowledge about the Affordable Care Act, according to officials who spoke at last week’s AHCJ Chicago chapter meeting.
Chiquita Brooks-LaSure, the director of coverage policy in the Office of Health Reform at the Department of Health and Humans Services, Michael McRaith, director of the Illinois Department of Insurance, and William Santulli, chief operating officer for Advocate Health Care, gathered to tell 25 journalists and students where the Act stands as its one-year anniversary approaches. Bruce Japsen, a Chicago Tribune health care reporter, moderated the panel.
The talked about the most common misnomers about the health care reform effort, how health insurance exchanges are being implemented, the concept behind accountable care organizations and more.
AHCJ members can read more about the discussion and download audio of the panel.
MedPage Today team gets 13 minutes with Sebelius
Filed under: Health care reform, Health journalism, Health policy, Hot Health Headline
The folks over a MedPage Today only had 13 minutes to interview HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on video, but they fit in discussion of yet another short-term fix for Medicare’s sustainable growth rate and cost control, electronic medical records, malpractice reform and, of course, health care reform.
MedPage News editor (and AHCJ member) Joyce Frieden came into the interview armed with questions on charged topics such as the aforementioned growth rate, pay-to-delay and reliance on pharmaceutical industry money. Frieden was joined by Washington correspondent Emily Walker and vice president/executive editor Peggy Peck joined the interview from Ohio by phone.
State-by-state data, the plug-n-play version
We write about state-by-state federal health statistics a lot here, but acknowledge that they can sometimes require basic spreadsheet and database skills, not to mention an understanding of statistics.
That’s where the National Center for Health Statistics Stats of the States pages comes in. It has piles of neatly packaged and ranked PDFs on things like “Kidney Disease Mortality by State” and “Percentage of Births Born Preterm by State,” and it even tidies it all up further by giving each state its own fact sheet full of ranks and numbers.
This is a site for the curious, as well as for folks who just need quick, clean numbers. Data-savvy reporters will already have their own ways of accessing all of this basic information, and would probably rather not deal with the PDF-entrapped numbers anyway. But, for what it is, it does the job nicely.
Related AHCJ tip sheets
Using the Census for health reporting
Finding patterns and trends in health data: Pivot tables in spreadsheets
Looking at Health Indicators by Zip Code
Drugs send more of the 45-plus crowd to hospitals
At a time when overall prescription drug use is climbing across the board, the AHRQ reports that the number of medication- and drug-related hospital visits for Americans over the age of 45 doubled between 1997 and 2008. Abuse is also on the rise in that age group, and the cost burden for the increase has fallen heavily upon Medicare and Medicaid. The numbers come from the AHRQ’s Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project, a wonderfully deep well of cost-related statistics from 2008.
A few numbers from the release:
Hospital admissions among those 45 years and older were driven by growth in discharges for three types of medication and drug-related conditions – drug-induced delirium; “poisoning” or overdose by codeine, meperidine and other opiate-based pain medicines; and withdrawal from narcotic or non-narcotic drugs.
Admissions for all medication and drug-related conditions grew by 117 percent – from 30,100 to 65,400 – for 45- to 64-year-olds between 1997 and 2008. The rate of admissions for people ages 65 to 84 closely followed, growing by 96 percent, and for people ages 85 and older, the rate grew by 87 percent. By comparison, the number of hospital admissions for these conditions among adults ages 18 to 44 declined slightly by 11 percent.
Beyond the headline-making news involving drugs, AHRQ’s report includes data on other types of medical conditions treated in hospitals, surgical procedures and costs in 2008.
HHS publishes insurance prices, Consumer Reports explains reform
Filed under: Government, Health care reform, Health policy
The first big wave of health care reform implementation has brought with it a mini-boom in consumer-oriented explainer sites and publications. You may remember the Kaiser Family Foundation’s Health Reform Source from our implementation coverage. In the days since, it’s been joined by offerings from Consumer Reports and the federal government, among others.
Since its launch this summer, Healthcare.gov has slowly evolved, adding explainers, tools and a Spanish-language version. Now, it has officially entered the meat-and-potatoes, utility-belt phase with an insurance search tool that includes detailed pricing and coverage information (press release). According to USA Today’s Alison Young, the tool indexes 4,400 plans from 225 insurers, and will be updated monthly.
And while it caters to consumers with things like monthly premiums, out-of-pocket costs and deductibles, the tool also includes some great data points for reporters, including covered services, percent of applications denied in the past three months, and percent of applicants charged more than the base price. One caveat: All the information is hidden behind a little search wizard, and you’ll have to enter demographic information and click a few tabs before you get to the good stuff.
And finally, as an antidote to the sometimes bureaucratic HHS site, the Consumers Union guide to the first six months of health care reform (Six-page PDF) is heavy on bullet points and easy-to-understand, categorical statements like “Sick children can’t be denied coverage” and “Preventive health care and screenings covered.”
Each major topic area is broken down into four key elements: “What’s New?”; “You may benefit if you”; “What you get”; and “The fine print.” The last subheading is where the guide really shines, as it briefly details exactly how an insurer can slip out of that particular provision.
HHS, CDC campaign to encourage flu vaccinations
The Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control are ramping up the campaign for flu vaccinations, judging by the subject lines in my e-mail.
At noon ET on Tuesday, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius; Howard Koh, M.D., M.P.H., HHS assistant secretary for health; and Anne Schuchat, M.D., director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Disease; will convene for a webcast about the flu season.
Schuchat, in a blog post, reminds us that this year, the CDC recommends that everyone older than 6 months get vaccinated.
You might remember that H1N1 seemed to hit pregnant woman especially hard during the last flu season. So HHS joined with a number of medical organizations for a letter to pregnant women explaining that getting vaccinated is “safe during any trimester” and can protect women and their babies from the flu.
Members of AHCJ can see eight PowerPoint presentations from the CDC’s two-day influenza briefing in August, including information on how the agency tracks influenza and information about the vaccine.
Ethics audits of health-related agencies available
Filed under: Conflicts of interest, Government, Health data, Public records
Every year, the federal Office of Government Ethics audits ethics programs at a few federal agencies and departments. The targeted agencies are all over the map – in fiscal 2010 they’ve already hit the Broadcasting Board of Governors and NASA’s Johnson Space center, among others – but include plenty that will interest health care journalists. The audit reports are about eight to 10 pages long and can be obtained with a FOIA request.
The Project on Government Oversight commented recently on the reports:
The Office of Government Ethics (OGE) used to publish these periodic reviews of agency ethics programs, but now only releases them in response to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. Given recent concerns about certain agencies’ ethics programs (we’re looking at you, Interior), now might be a good time for agencies to take a more proactive approach.
Here’s a selection of some offices that have been audited in recent years:
2010
- National Transportation Safety Board
- United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission
2009
- Rural Development (USDA)
- Naval Hospital Pensacola
- HHS Office of the Secretary and Office of General Counsel
- HHS Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services
- HHS Health Resources and Service Administration
- USDA - Food Safety and Inspection Service
2008
- Department of Veteran’s Affairs
- Armed Force Retirement Home
2006
- Centers for Disease Control
- U.S. Army Medical Command
2005
- Food and Drug Administration
How HHS can improve data infrastructure
Filed under: Health data, Health journalism, Hot Health Headline
Better data means better public health. That’s the message put forth in a new commentary piece in the Journal of the American Medical Association, and one which we can all get behind. The authors praise HHS for the progress it has made toward data access thus far, and then push it to make its data even more useful and available. They’re writing from the perspective of researchers who use the data in their work but much of what they say is applicable to journalists as well.
For the record, HHS’ 63-page open government plan can be found here. The authors argue that the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research has mentioned that a better data infrastructure will be crucial to the success of its mission, and that the best way to achieve that infrastructure will be to follow their three-part strategy:
- Expansion of Data AccessThe Research Data Assistance Center is in the midst of a 5-year exclusive contract to provide CMS claims data to researchers. Ending that exclusivity, the authors write, would simultaneously drive down prices and improve access to data.
- Leverage Nongovernmental Partners and ApplicationsIf data is made more accessible, the authors argue, then the private sector will add all sorts of value with innovative data and geospatial applications. Journalism would seem to be a big component of this added value.
- Improve Data Iteratively and Create Awareness“The DHHS must view its data as a strategic asset and expand data quality, completeness, and access iteratively over time, influenced by data users. The data should be released in standardized formats without intellectual property constraints. Also, the DHHS and the private sector need to communicate and create awareness of data availability to ensure use.”
Access to the Journal of the American Medical Association is, of course, one of the many benefits of being an AHCJ member.
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