Pittsburgh’s dominant health system closed a hospital in the economically depressed town of Braddock four years ago and soon after opened a new hospital in the more affluent suburb of Monroeville, Pa.
Lillian Thomas of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette wanted to know how common it was for hospital corporations to abandon disadvantaged towns and inner cities. That was the beginning of a reporting journey that has produced a hard-hitting, ongoing series by Thomas and colleagues at the Post-Gazette and Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
The first installments revealed how most of the defunct hospitals were small to mid-size community hospitals and public hospitals that had served poor urban neighborhoods. The closures left many low-income neighborhoods without an effective safety net, undermined efforts to recruit doctors and did away with high-wage jobs for local residents. An incredibly detailed interactive map allows readers to track where old hospitals have closed and new ones have opened in cities across the U.S. since 1991.
I asked Thomas to share how she approached the project and mustered the resources to pull it off. Read more …
