Medical groups voluntarily tighten ethics rules
Filed under: Health data, Health journalism, Hot Health Headline
Writing for NPR’s health blog, Maggie Mertens reports that while recently passed reform legislation includes the “Physician Payments Sunshine Act” (PDF) that will require companies to report any payments or gifts to physicians over $10 in value starting in 2012 (and reported and made available in a public database in 2013), some groups are getting a jump on the rules and voluntarily tightening their own conflict of interest policies.
Take, for instance, the recent decision by a bunch of medical specialty groups to stop taking industry money when coming up with guidelines for treatment. The Council of Medical Specialty Sciences, representing groups like the American College of Physicians, the American College of Cardiology and the American Society of Clinical Oncology, unveiled new rules on conflicts of interest last week. Thirteen of the member groups have adopted them so far, with the others saying they aren’t far behind. The rules also require that all funding from pharmaceutical and device-making companies to board members or groups will be publicly disclosed. Swag at medical conferences becomes a no-no, although big drugmakers had said a few years back they were going to stop the giveaways of medicine-branded pens, logoed tote bags and that sort of thing anyway.
For a discussion of the challenges reporters face when investigating conflicts of interest, read Elizabeth Bahm’s AHCJ article about a related panel at the recent Health Journalism 2010 conference, and this related article by John Fauber.
Hensley explores HIT-related privacy breaches
Filed under: Health data, Health journalism, Hospitals, Hot Health Headline, Studies
NPR health blogger Scott Hensley writes that the HHS’ running list of “breaches of unsecured protected health information affecting 500 or more individuals” reads like a sort of police blotter for health wonks, and explores a few of the more interesting cases.
Related: FDA committee recommends anonymous HIT error database
As expected, the FDA’s Health IT Policy Committee endorsed a database to confidentially record reports of HIT-related errors. A few months, another committee and the Office of the National Coordinator still sit between the recommendations and action.
Fluportal.org: Postmortem of a temporary resource
Fluportal.org, a Corporation for Public Broadcasting-funded site built to help public media cover H1N1 and related issues, has completed its grant and will stop updating at the end of this month.
As a fitting capstone to a very well-executed and valuable resource, the staff has posted an exhaustive, honest review of what the site did, where things went right and where they went wrong. It’s a lengthy read, but one that gives insight into how best to organize and execute a health-related, issue-oriented Web resource.
Other resources on the site look into health reporting and how to communicate information about H1N1 to the public:
- Was H1N1 Info Communicated Well to the Public?
- How WBUR’s Sacha Pfeiffer Reports on H1N1
- Can Health Reporting Weather the Economic Storm
Comments invited on latest draft of DSM
A new version of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders has come out every decade or so (it varies widely) since 1952. 
It hasn’t substantially changed since 1994, but the next revision is slated to come out in 2013. It’s a pretty big event, as the book’s diagnostic criteria are used around the world to determine who is diagnosed with mental disorders.
With the release of the new version, lines may shift and folks who were diagnosed with mental disorders may find themselves “undiagnosed.” Others will have labels changed and gain labels they didn’t have before.
The latest draft proposal of the May 2013 revisions, upon which public comment will be accepted until April 20, 2010, was posted on Feb. 9. APA workgroups will review the comments and begin trials soon after. Benedict Carey rounded up and evaluated some of the biggest proposed changes for The New York Times. In addition to bipolar disorders in children and autism spectrum disorders, Carey discusses the sheer significance of the changes.
“Anything you put in that book, any little change you make, has huge implications not only for psychiatry but for pharmaceutical marketing, research, for the legal system, for who’s considered to be normal or not, for who’s considered disabled,” said Dr. Michael First, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University who edited the fourth edition of the manual but is not involved in the fifth.
“And it has huge implications for stigma,” Dr. First continued, “because the more disorders you put in, the more people get labels, and the higher the risk that some get inappropriate treatment.”
Transmitter tracks health-care workers’ washing
Despite constant reminders and a high-level of industrywide awareness, studies indicate that less than half of American health care workers wash their hands as frequently as they ought to. This contributes to the health-care-associated infections that kill tens of thousands annually. Now, NPR’s Gigi Douban reports, one Alabama hospital has resorted to high-tech monitoring devices to keep tabs on the handwashing practices of its employees.
Workers wear a special wireless transmitter, from which, Douban writes, “the hospital can tell when she entered a patient’s room, whether she washed her hands and whether she washed again on the way out. The information is sent to hospital officials, including the CEO.”
“If they’re habitually not complying, we can send them an e-mail or send them a text message, something that goes to them personally,” says Harvey Nix, CEO of Proventix, the company that developed the monitoring system at Baptist Princeton.
According to Douban, the CDC is currently investigating the effects of the technology upon the behavior of health workers.
Fluportal.org stays on top of H1N1
While H1N1 seems to have peaked in many states – at least for now – Fluportal.org’s resources to cover the pandemic are still growing. Recent highlights include tips for using American Public Media’s Public Insight Network (which we’ve mentioned before in conjunction with a ProPublica story on health care reform), a few interesting photos with creative commons licenses (like a collection of H1N1 street art).
One of the creative commons licensed shots of H1N1 street art spotlighted by fluportal.org. Photo by Brazilian artist guitavares via Flickr.
Fluportal also has tackled some media ethics issues related to the outbreak, notably in a post where staff from PRI’s The World had to consider how to frame the German medical establishment’s reluctance to recommend the H1N1 vaccine. After all, they did not want to confuse listeners or have a negative impact on public health, but they also weren’t going to “censor” the sincere opinions of German doctors, even if they conflicted with CDC advice.
Related
Public broadcasters have H1N1 site for journalists
How hysterectomies spurred Dartmouth Atlas’ birth
Filed under: Conflicts of interest, Government, Health care reform, Health data, Hospitals, Hot Health Headline
In the first of a three-part series on health care costs in America, NPR’s Alix Spiegel tells the story of the birth of the Dartmouth Atlas, how some of its founder’s earliest research changed the health care delivery system in Maine and what it tells us about health and money. Spiegel unspools the story as a series of questions, the answer to each of which pushed researchers and physicians closer to an understanding of what drives health care costs in America.
The story kicks off in the mid ’60s when John Wennberg, now famous (among health reporters, at least) as the father of the Dartmouth Atlas, got a grant to study the best way to expand health technology to rural Vermont. To answer that question, Wennberg asked what health care was actually delivered in the state. From there, he discovers massive geographical differences in the frequency of procedures such as hysterectomies, and the questions and answers tumble neatly into line like so many dominoes.
Part two of the series, focusing on how active patient participation drives up costs, will air next week on NPR’s Morning Edition. In the third installment, Spiegel will examine the cost impact of direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs.
KQED takes stock of food safety measures
California public radio station KQED explored food inspection and safety at all levels of the process, from producer to consumer, in a package rich with audio and multimedia.
Specific topics addressed in the package include:
- Federal plans to reform the food safety system
- The safety of leafy greens, and the impact of possible federal regulations upon that sector of the agriculture industry
- A snapshot of the work of a health inspector in the California Bay Area
- A primer on consumer health safety and a separate segment addressing the rarely discussed dangers of growing your own food
- Food-safety issues related to both recreational and commercial fishing
AHCJ resources
Tip Sheets
- Lifting the shroud: Using multiple-cause-of-death data
- Melamine: A primer on the contamination of food
Article
NPR series follows the money on health reform
Filed under: Health care reform, Hot Health Headline
A new NPR series, Dollar Politics, looks to, both figuratively and literally, turn the camera away from the politicians up on stage and train it on the army of lobbyists and special interest representatives that has descended upon the city.
Between 1998 and 2008, the number of registered lobbyists on health care more than doubled, to 3,627, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The statistic doesn’t include players who don’t engage in lobbying as defined by federal law — among them, grass-roots organizers, producers of TV campaigns and former members of Congress who remain in Washington as senior advisers to corporate clients.
Spending on lobbying jumped even higher over the past decade. Organizations lobbying on health care spent $484.4 million in 2008, more than two and a half times the spending in 1998.
In addition to looking at where the money is coming from and why its being spent, NPR reporters Peter Overby and Andrea Seabrook also considered the effects of this massive cash infusion, writing that with so many interests pushing and pulling on every decision, gridlock may set in. As the series goes on, they hope to track even more of the money and connect the lobbying dots.
Wrestling with the FDA recall e-mail avalanche
Filed under: Health journalism, Hot Health Headline, Public health
NPR’s April Fulton recently blogged about a phenomenon familiar to anyone with a subscription to the FDA’s recall e-mail list, or their RSS feed, or their Twitter account: a late rush of random recall messages that would require a prohibitive amount of time to sort and research. 
For example, in a two-minute span on June 15, @FDArecalls on Twitter buzzed with messages about multivitamin labels, fish, organic chocolate peanuts, white peppers and soy sprouts. Fulton also notes that many of the notices come out late in the day.
She proposes some sort of flagging or rating system to make it easier to figure out which stories are big deals and which aren’t. She may be on to something. The FDA could make these releases more accessible and useful for journalists and consumers. At the very least, it should be possible to explain the location and magnitude of the public health danger in a way that could be understood at a glance.
What other tips or tricks help you figure out which recalls are relevant to your readers? Do you have suggestions as to how the FDA could makes its releases more accessible or useful? Let us know.
-
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
