Using social media to find real people
as sources for your story

When writing about medical studies, drugs, devices, medical procedures and other health stories, social media can help you find real patients, not the ones groomed by pharmaceutical companies, to round out your coverage of research and treatments. In this helpful tip sheet, Liz Szabo, an award-winning medical reporter for USA Today passes on some of her best tricks for using social media to cultivate sources.

If you're planning to cover the American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting, this advice comes just in time for you to set up a network of potential sources in advance.

Sign up for free workshop
on rural health issues

AHCJ’s sixth Rural Health Journalism Workshop will bring journalists together with health care and policy experts who focus on the medical challenges of rural areas. Leave with a better understanding of what’s happening – or will be happening – in rural regions, and return to work with dozens of story ideas you can pursue.

This special one-day, no-fee workshop will help you find and cover health stories in rural America.

Health Journalism 2014 will be in Denver

Health Journalism 2014, the annual conference of the Association of Health Care Journalists, will take place in Denver next year, AHCJ has announced.

The conference, which has drawn between 600 and 800 attendees in each of the past three years, will take place March 27-30, 2014, at the Grand Hyatt Denver. The hotel is located just a block from Denver’s popular 16^th Street pedestrian mall and features views of the vibrant downtown and the majestic Rocky Mountains.

Journalists call on USDA to release food stamp information

The Association of Health Care Journalists, along with six other journalism and open-government groups, has called on the U.S. Department of Agriculture to release to the public vital information about the multibillion-dollar food stamps program.

Currently, the USDA refuses to reveal how much money individual retailers make from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, better known as food stamps. Additionally, the USDA does not disclose which products are purchased with SNAP dollars or how much is spent on each product, in aggregate.

Cover upcoming changes in health care workforce

While employment in many industries tanked and weakly recovered, jobs in the health care sector have grown at a steady clip. But ever-growing health employment may be coming to an end, as National Journal reporter Margot Sanger-Katz learned when she reported on the health sector’s impact on the Pittsburgh economy.

Deficit reductions out of Washington will squeeze the dollars fueling health care jobs.

Sanger-Katz urges reporters to cover the health care workforce in their own communities and, in this tip sheet, she points out potential stories, asks key questions and offers some essential resources. The changing health workforce is a key part of the story of health reform, and it hasn’t yet been well told.

Readmissions, the drug store
and a sleep-deprived patient

Colorado Public Radio's Eric Whitney recently reported on a new program involving Walgreens pharmacists that is intended to help hospitals reduce readmission rates. It seemed like a straightforward story about improving patient care and new business opportunities created by the Affordable Care Act.

Not so straightforward was the improvising Whitney had to do when things started going awry. He writes about the challenges of putting together a piece for radio, what went wrong and how he was able to pull it all together.

AHCJ names Seegert new topic leader on aging issues

The Association of Health Care Journalists has hired reporting professional Liz Seegert as the new topic champion for its core curriculum efforts on aging.

Seegert’s reporting and writing background spans more than 25 years in print, broadcast, and digital media, covering consumer and professional health topics. She takes over from founding topic leader Judith Graham, who built the foundation of the site, and who now writes for The New York Times’ blog The New Old Age.

The pages offer a central and cataloged collection of materials on the topic, with the practical daily guidance of a lead editor who specializes in the topic. Each specialty topic page includes glossaries, key concepts, reporting tip sheets, weekly blog items, first-person stories by fellow journalists, videos, data and more. The topic home page serves as a launch pad to more resources on the site and elsewhere.

Focus on freelancing:
Keys to negotiating fair contracts

There’s no shortage of war stories among freelancers about the kinds of contracts they’ve been asked to sign. Some go on for pages, others are marvels of straightforward simplicity. The worst ones demand – in addition to a well-researched, cogently written and accurate story – guarantees against any error that could possibly occur along the road to publication.

Veteran freelancer Irene Wielawski says it took her years to figure out how to build into standard contracts the tools she needed to protect the integrity of her work. Now she uses that experience to advise other freelancers on what things to avoid when negotiating a contract and why. She also draws on the experience of other freelancers for a list of useful tips on how to negotiate terms and fees.

AHCJ unveils HospitalInspections.org

The Association of Health Care Journalists has launched hospitalinspections.org, a free, searchable news application that compiles thousands of federal inspection reports for hospitals around the nation since January 2011.

The move follows years of advocacy by AHCJ urging the government to release the deficiency reports in an electronic format. Until now, reporters and the public had to file Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to obtain the documents, a process fraught with delays that can stymie timely public knowledge of problems at hospitals.

Secrets of pitching:
Tips, tricks and insight into editors’ minds

Recorded March 5

For freelancers and potential freelancers, pitching is job No. 1. AHCJ knows that; that’s why every year, our annual Health Journalism conference offers Freelance PitchFest, which puts you face-to-face with some of the biggest health editors in the country. Members attending PitchFest know they have to be ready to make a good impression in minutes — and members who won’t be attending the conference, but are busy freelancers, want to know more about pitching too. AHCJ has your back with a webcast on pitching health stories that sell, featuring three top editors.

Reporter’s guide to health care antitrust issues

We don’t normally think about local hospitals as cutthroat competitors seeking to put rivals out of business or operating monopolies that can charge whatever they wish because they’ve bought, intimidated or frightened away competition.

But anticompetitive behavior can exert real impact on health care pricing, access and quality of care.

As Mark Taylor tells us in this comprehensive tip sheet, antitrust issues are among the most underreported stories in health care. And that’s a shame because, at their core, health care antitrust stories often include classic elements of conflict, greed, conspiracies, collusion and intense rivalry. Millions, even billions, of dollars are at stake. Find out what stories you might find in your community.

Evaluate, report on quality of hospitals in your area

Graphic via OpenHeatMap

AHCJ offers hospital mortality and readmission data, which will allow you to tell your audience whether a hospital's rates are in line with national averages, significantly better or significantly worse. A special AHCJ webinar provided an introduction to this data, including ideas on how to use the data in your own area.

The federal survey that reflects patients' perspectives of hospital care has been updated on the AHCJ website. The spreadsheets that AHCJ offers allow you to analyze the top-rated hospitals — or lowest-rated hospitals — in your area. 

Need help analyzing data? AHCJ has tip sheets to help, including "Finding patterns and trends in health data: Pivot tables in spreadsheets" and "Intro to investigating health data using spreadsheets." Links to the data and the relevant tip sheets are all on the Data page.

Stay in touch with AHCJ through social networking sites and tools

Find freelance health journalists in our directory

‘Downsized’ members can take advantage of transition-assistance program

AHCJ makes Nursing Home Compare data easier to analyze

Find stories with ready-to-use Hospital Compare data

Reporting Guides

• Covering Medical Research
• Covering the Health of Local Nursing Homes
• Navigating the CDC: A Journalist’s Guide to the CDC Web Site
• Covering Obesity: A Guide for Reporters
• Covering Hospitals: Using Tools on the Web