Tag Archives: johnson

Reform may worsen ER crowding

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Associated Press medical reporter Carla K. Johnson has found that, contrary to common assumptions, emergency rooms could become even more crowded with the passage and implementation of health care reform. Popular wisdom has it that, with more access to insurance thus to primary care, folks will be less likely to go to the emergency room for minor complaints or to allow illness to progress to the point where an emergency visit is necessary. Johnson, an AHCJ board member, gives three big reasons why it’s not that simple:

  • There are not (will not) be enough primary care physicians in America to deliver that preventative care.
  • At present, the uninsured are no more likely to use the ER than patients with insurance coverage.
  • “The biggest users of emergency rooms by far are Medicaid recipients,” Johnson writes. “And the new health insurance law will increase their ranks by about 16 million.”

ERs are crowded, Johnson writes, not only because of a lack of insurance but also because of obstacles inherent in their structure and mission, such as an aging population, more people with chronic illnesses, the closures of many ERs in the 1990s and the demand for beds for both emergency patients and patients scheduled for elective surgeries that bring more money.

AHCJ Immediate Past President Trudy Lieberman praised Johnson’s story and linked it to reporting by The Boston Globe on the impact of that state’s reform law upon emergency room use. So far, events in Massachusetts reinforce Johnson’s predictions.

The Boston Globe revisited Massachusetts’s ER conundrum last week, and reported pretty much what it did last year—that despite the state’s reform law, which mandated everyone have coverage beginning in July 2007, emergency room use is rising. Last year, the state’s Division of Health Care Finance and Policy cautioned that it was too early to draw any conclusions from the seven percent rise in ER visits between 2005 and 2007. Now the agency is saying that expanded coverage may be one reason for the 9 percent rise from 2004 to 2008. According to commissioner David Morales, many studies have shown that expanding coverage does not reduce emergency room visits. That’s because the uninsured “are not really responsible for significant ER use,” he told the Globe.

Andrew Van Dam of The Wall Street Journal previously worked at the AHCJ offices while earning his master’s degree at the Missouri School of Journalism.

Outpatient inspections show serious lapses

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cms2567

AP medical reporter and AHCJ board member Carla K. Johnson used FOIA requests to uncover a wealth of infection-control violations at outpatient clinics in Illinois. The majority of Illinois ambulatory centers have yet to be inspected under the tough new rules, but 76 percent of those which have been inspected also have been cited. The inspections are part of a national push to increase the oversight of ambulatory care centers.

Previously, inspectors from the Illinois Department of Public Health visited the centers about every seven years. But the state last year began more vigorous and frequent inspections of outpatient surgery centers, following directives from national health officials. The state now plans to inspect a third of Illinois centers each year, said Karen Senger, a supervisor in the Health Department’s Division of Health Care Facilities and Programs.

The crackdown resulted from a hepatitis C outbreak in Las Vegas believed to be caused by unsafe injection practices at two now-closed clinics.

Johnson’s state request turned up a laundry list of specific violations, all of which she summarized in one nifty sentence: “The five-second rule appears to be alive and well in Illinois same-day surgery centers, where medical staff were observed picking up items that had fallen to the floor and behaving as if they weren’t contaminated by germs,” Johnson wrote. In an e-mail to Covering Health, Johnson said her story should be easy to localize and explained just how she obtained the inspection reports and why they are now available.

I FOIA’d state inspection reports (CMS-2567s) for ambulatory surgery centers in Illinois that were cited for deficiencies in infection control during the past 12 months. States have been directed by HHS to use a new audit tool to look for infection control problems, following an outbreak linked to two centers in Las Vegas.

Andrew Van Dam of The Wall Street Journal previously worked at the AHCJ offices while earning his master’s degree at the Missouri School of Journalism.

Schwitzer: Reliance on journals hinders coverage

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AHCJ member and past board member Gary Schwitzer is featured on the cover of Minnesota magazine, the bimonthly publication of the University of Minnesota Alumni Association.

In the magazine, Schwitzer, who is an associate professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota and publisher of HealthNewsReview.org, discusses the quality of health reporting and questions he says journalists are not answering:

We’re not asking tough questions: What’s the quality of evidence? Who’s going to have access to it? What’s it going to cost? Who’s your source? What are his or her conflicts of interest?

When asked about reporters who are doing a good job, Schwitzer cites AHCJ board member and Associated Press medical writer Carla Johnson for her evidence-based reporting and AHCJ member Scott Hensley, who was – until yesterday – co-editor of The Wall Street Journal Health Blog.

Pia Christensen (@AHCJ_Pia) is the managing editor/online services for AHCJ. She manages the content and development of healthjournalism.org, coordinates AHCJ's social media efforts and edits and manages production of association guides, programs and newsletters.