I'm a physician. As such, the information I work with has immediate consequences. I have to get it right every time. Of course, no one can really get it right every time, but if you want to report health information, you have to try very, very hard. According to a Pew survey released last fall, over 60% of Americans seek out and act on health information online. When you put a story out there, people are going to read it and act on it, so you are, in essence, giving health advice without the benefit of a license to practice medicine.
If you have ever suffered from serious, ongoing pain (RSI, anyone?) you know the desire to take something, anything, to make it go away. What if you were told that you may have a risk as high as 2% of developing heart problems as a result of the painkiller? Would that stop you? And what if you were told that your risk without the drugs was 1%? Would that make you any more likely to start taking the pills?
Health information technology is a complex and challenging topic to cover, and it's easy to get lost in the jargon. Veteran journalist Neil Versel offers background and story ideas for covering this issue in your community as health reform rolls out.
It wasn’t until four years after the first allegations were brought against Dr. Michael E. Stoddard in Colorado that the curtain was pulled back for the patients to see what had been happening on stage.
The scene that the Colorado Board of Medical Examiners’ final decision set, with Stoddard as the main player, was not pretty.
Here are 10 ideas from three journalists talking about how to cover health reform’s rollout at the Association of Health Care Journalists conference in Chicago:
1. Will there be a physician shortage in your area? Start checking in with your local medical school or teaching hospital and the Association of American Medical Colleges and Teaching Hospitals.
If the ProPublica experiment with nonprofit investigative journalism is teaching us anything, it is the importance of follow-through.
Reading Dr. Michael E. Stoddard's history of infractions, like so many medical board records in Colorado, is a little like reading Tom Stoppard's play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. Each disciplinary document focuses on what happened offstage, omitting key details and leaving the real drama, tragedy, or dark comedy to the imagination.
When word hit the grapevine that the Madre Maria Ines Teresa Health Center in Santa Ana had prescription painkillers for the asking, the place couldn't keep them in stock.
Low on cash, his reputation shredded by patient complaints about botched plastic surgeries, Dr. Harrell Robinson must have felt he had a guardian angel when Magdalena Annan approached him.
Annan ran the beatific sounding Madre Maria Ines Teresa Health Center at 1523 Broadway Street in Santa Ana, which targeted Southern California immigrants.
