Tag Archives: finance

Globe Spotlight journalist reports on the link between economic inequality and financial toxicity in health care

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Image by Colin Dunn via Flickr

Two of the biggest issues the Democratic candidates are addressing in the presidential race are economic inequality and the need to reform the health insurance system.

In 2016, Liz Kowalczyk, a health care and medical writer for The Boston Globe, rotated onto the paper’s Spotlight team for a project about race to document segregation in the city’s health care system. Soon after beginning that assignment she found an almost ideal source for one of her first articles, a nursing home worker who was diagnosed with stage three breast cancer. Continue reading

New site gives access to nonprofit hospital financial data

The Association of Health Care Journalists today unveiled hospitalfinances.org, a website that offers free, searchable financial information on nonprofit hospitals across the United States.

The aim is to make nonprofit hospital finances easier to access, search and analyze. This effort follows years of training by AHCJ to encourage journalists and the public to use nonprofit hospital filings and learn more about hospitals. Continue reading

Tips for freelancers to unleash their inner entrepreneur

Two top freelancers at Health Journalism 2018 – Linda Marsa and Heather Boerner – and attorney Ruth Carter offered a series of great tips to help you start thinking of your freelance work as a real business … and make it pay like one.

Marsa kicked off the session, “Unleash your inner entrepreneur,” with advice about getting a good mix of work, and getting paid for it: Continue reading

AHCJ fellow tells how she examined hospital community benefit, post-ACA

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Photo: HaeB via Wikimedia CommonsSaint Francis Memorial Hospital in San Francisco

Beth Kutscher, a Modern Healthcare reporter who recently become the publication’s California bureau chief, has covered health care finance for several years, with a particular focus on for-profit health care.

During her 2015 AHCJ Reporting Fellowship on Health Care Performance, she looked at the impact Medicaid expansion had on hospital finances. And she spent some time reporting on how not-for-profit hospitals have to give back to their communities to justify their tax exempt status.

That’s often through providing charity care or training physicians – but some hospitals are addressing different community needs. One San Francisco hospital, for instance, supports a program that escorts kids after school through a gang-ridden neighborhood, enhancing both their physical safety and their stress levels.

Find out more about how Kutscher explored this topic, and what she learned from it, in her How I Did It essay.

Navigating the ‘geriverse’ whether it’s your normal beat or not

Photo: Steve Baker via Flickr

Aging. We all do it; some better than others.

Why do some people keep going strong into their 90s and beyond, while others become frail, infirm, or lose cognitive ability while still a “young-old?” To report on aging is to open a Pandora’s box of related issues, from care delivery to policy matters; insurance, finance, housing, nutrition, family relationships, technology … you name it and chances are there’s a story angle on aging. Continue reading