Today's Daily Briefing travels to Chinese mental institutions, California prisons, and all over the map with bogus trend stories.
It's a bit afield from our usual reporting, but a dead body in Los Angeles' landmark Millennium Biltmore Hotel, dozens of cops and hundreds of singing and dancing would-be celebs swirled through my life last weekend. But so far, nothing I've seen has mentioned a historical piece of the mystery at the Biltmore.
The annual Association of Health Care Journalists conference has become indispensable in a way conferences never are.
Far from just an excuse to see old friends and drink too much, the AHCJ conference is always so packed with great speakers and workshops that writers find themselves wishing for a baby monitor they could set up in one session while they attend a different session down the hall.
The Medical Board of California had been warned repeatedly about an obstetrician with a history of patient deaths and allegations of negligence, but, instead of taking action, the board appointed him to supervise a doctor who had been found negligent in the death of two children.
There was a collective cry of alarm this week to news that the Medical Board of California had mishandled the case of a physician accused of negligence in the abortion-related death of a patient.
I wrote about the Dr. Andrew Rutland case on Tuesday, detailing how the medical board had appointed a doctor who had been disciplined by the board to oversee Rutland, in violation of the board’s own policies. Here is what happened next:
I started listing my favorite stories of the past year, in no particular order, on Dec. 21. Here is the rest of the list.
“At VA Hospital, A Rogue Cancer Unit,” Walt Bogdanich, The New York Times
Thomas Sullivan writes the Policy and Medicine blog. He also runs Rockpointe Corporation, a medical education company that works with nonprofits and for-profits to create continuing medical education (CME) programs. As company-sponsored CME and ghostwriting by companies has come under fire, Sullivan has become an outspoken advocate for medical education firms.
In a fascinating piece in the New York Times, Natasha Singer detailed how Dr. Gloria Bachmann leapt at the chance to sign her name to an article she had not written.
The New York Times and the medical journal PloS Medicine won an incredible victory for patients and for health writers last week. They persuaded a judge in a lawsuit against drug makers to release 1,500 previously sealed documents that tell the story of how drug companies like Wyeth have been acting as ghost writers in medical journals.
