Writing for the Las Vegas Sun, reporter Marshall Allen put a fitting cap on an award-winning investigative run at the paper with a story rounding up the state’s first steps toward transparency in medical error reporting. Through the lens of former Beth Israel Deaconess chief, transparency pioneer and blogger Paul Levy, Allen demonstrates just how much transparency in Nevada could benefit both hospitals and their patients. It’s potential that was created, in no small part, through the reporting that Allen and Alex Richards have done.
Over the course of the Sun’s two-year investigation, most Las Vegas hospitals refused to discuss patient safety issues. The Nevada Hospital Association has since 2002 lobbied against mandated public reporting of patient harm. But since the Sun’s investigation, and with legislation pending, the association has said it will begin posting patient injury and infection data on its hospital quality website.
Throughout the piece, Allen paints a sunny picture of a more transparent future, and uses examples from Massachusetts to dissolve any reservations readers might have.
Dr. Tejal Gandhi, Partners’ director of patient safety, said at first there was panic over posting on the hospitals’ websites the infections and injuries suffered by patients. People worried there would be a media frenzy or a rise in malpractice lawsuits, she said.
When the information became public, in 2009, The Boston Globe published one story but there was little other reaction, she said.
The hospitals have seen no increase in malpractice lawsuits. But it has brought a new focus on reducing certain infections and injuries, including the formation of task forces and establishment of standardized safety protocols.
Allen, who recently took a job with ProPublica, completed part of this series while on an AHCJ Media Fellowship on Health Performance, supported by the Commonwealth Fund. The series, which was reported with Richards, won a 2010 Award for Excellence in Health Care Journalism, the investigative reporting category in the 2010 Scripps Howard Awards, best in show for the print category of the National Headliner Awards and the 2011 Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting.
