Tim Darragh wrote this series as a project of and with a grant from the National Health Journalism Fellowship, a program of the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School of Journalism. The series explains a movement in health care to treat the system’s “super utilizers,” the relatively few whose care is burdening the system. Currently, those patients’ symptoms are treated when they become severe enough to warrant emergency care, which makes their treatment disproportionately expensive. Under a system piloted in Allentown, Pa. , and other cities through a federal grant, the full patient is addressed. Social workers and mental health workers help determine the reasons behind a lack of care, which often is tied to a lack of transportation or housing or support. Instead of hospitals seeing the patients as the problem, doctors are asking what the system can do to ensure the patient has proper access to care, medicine and support. In other words, the system — not the patient — has to change. That’s why the series ran under the banner: Sick system. It came about through Darragh’s Obamacare coverage because the federal grant that funded Allentown’s and other cities’ projects came through the Affordable Care Act.
