Bill blocks funding of consumer safety database
Filed under: Government, Health data, Public records
The 2012 spending bill approved today by the House Financial Services and General Government appropriations subcommittee would prohibit the Consumer Product Safety Commission from expending funds on its consumer product safety database, according to OMB Watch, a nonprofit organization that works to improve government transparency and accountability.
The database allows consumers - and journalists - to search for safety information about products they have or are considering buying. It includes recalls and reports of harm and also gives consumers a way to submit such reports.
CPSC launched the database at SaferProducts.gov on March 11. In spite of the recent congressional support for the database, corporate allies have attacked the database because they want to shield their products from scrutiny, ostensibly due to information quality concerns.
OMB Watch reports the same provision was included in the one version of the 2011 spending bill but didn’t make it into the version that was passed. But the version that passed included a provision for the Government Accountability Office “to conduct a study on the database’s information quality, which GAO has not yet completed.”
What we’re reading: OSHA, reform and a new site
Filed under: Government, Health care reform, Health journalism, Member news, Nursing
These are busy times for AHCJ (getting ready for Health Journalism 2010!) but we want to take a moment to share some of what we’re reading:
OMBWatch: OSHA Proposal Cuts Workers’ Right to Know about Chemical Risks
PLoS ONE: The Unbearable Lightness of Health Science Reporting: A Week Examining Italian Print Media
FairWarning.org launches: New site to investigate health, safety and corporate conduct issues was founded by former Los Angeles Times reporters.
Poynter’s Al Tompkins has an interview with ProPublica’s Charles Ornstein (also president of AHCJ’s board of directors) about investigating nurses and regulatory boards.
Health care reform: What’s next? Reporters Jim Landers, Washington correspondent for The Dallas Morning News, and Noam Levey, health policy reporter for the Los Angeles Times/Tribune Washington Bureau, have advice on how to cover the local angles of health reform. Suggestions from other reporters will be added soon.
More pills mean more risk
Sometimes it takes a celebrity to draw attention to something we should have noticed long ago. Though the exact cause of pop icon Michael Jackson’s death remains undetermined, reports of his heavy use of prescription medicines remain at the center of attention.
Cardiologist and blogger Westby Fisher draws a lesson from the Jackson case and his own experience closer to home. “We have become a pill culture,” he writes, gobbling medicines “with barely a thought about their side effects.” That’s a mistake.
Fisher got to thinking about the commonplace but risky combinations of drugs many Americans consume after watching his mother-in-law casually count out a mountain of daily meds then swallow them “like a pelican downing an oversized fish.”
Doctors can be as “pill-obsessed” as patients, he writes, and too often turn to a prescription as a “quick fix” without considering the alternatives – or consequences. At the hospital where Fisher works, he’s noticed more and more side effects – especially abnormal heart rhythms – in patients taking multiple drugs.
Fisher urges patients to disclose all the medicines they’re taking to their doctors. Physicians, for their part, should be more careful when prescribing drugs to patients already on oodles of them.
Last-minute rules would affect health care
ProPublica, which is tracking last-minute rulemaking by the Bush Administration, reports on one rule that would make it more difficult for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to regulate toxins.
Fire and emergency response personnel practice techniques for hazardous materials containment and removal. Photo: Jim Gathany/CDC
ProPublica, which also links to coverage in The Washington Post and The New York Times, says “OSHA has issued just one significant health standard” in the past eight years - and that it did that under court order.
Another rule the administration is pushing forward is would require federally funded health care facilities to allow employees to refuse to provide services at odds with their moral or religious beliefs, such as abortion.
David G. Savage of the Los Angeles Times reports that “For more than 30 years, federal law has dictated that doctors and nurses may refuse to perform abortions. The new rule would go further by making clear that healthcare workers also may refuse to provide information or advice to patients who might want an abortion.”
Savage writes that the rule, as written, could extend to other procedures, including prescribing birth control or providing artificial inseminination. A lawyer for the National Women’s Law Center said the law also could affect decisions about end-of-life care.
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New at HealthJournalism.org
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- 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
