Tag Archives: ornstein

Hospitals learning not to fear public data

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In HealthLeaders magazine, a publication that targets “healthcare executives and senior decision-makers,” Cheryl Clark writes that the recent explosion of publicly available health care quality data may force hospitals to change the way they approach unflattering numbers.

Encouragingly, Clark quotes officials who have found that the only way to deal with all these new numbers is not to ignore or discredit them, a tempting option that has often been the default in the past, but instead to release even more data, and to better educate the public about the numbers that are out there.

(James) Conway says that whatever they do, hospitals should not do what they used to when negative stories arose, “which was lay low, hope it vanishes, and take a ‘this too shall pass’ attitude. Or, if there’s data that says, for example, your coronary artery bypass graft profile is horrible, historically what hospitals have done is to discredit the data. It’s sort of like a pigeon in a shooting game.

“But what we’ve learned is that the organization must ask a critical question: Could this data be right?”

That, of course, is where health journalists come in.

Charles Ornstein, president of the Association of Health Care Journalists and an investigative healthcare reporter with ProPublica, says hospital executives should get used to heightened attention. The AHCJ is beefing up efforts to educate reporters on how to find and interpret quality statistics about healthcare providers, where to see inspection reports, and how to compare patient experience, readmission, and mortality rates.

“More reporters are realizing the treasure trove of information they can find,” he says. “For decades, hospitals fought to keep this information out of the public domain. But now that it is public, we as journalists have an obligation to make it relevant.”

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.

Investigative reports lead to Senate investigation into painkiller promotion

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Following up on reporting efforts from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel/MedPage Today and ProPublica, a Senate committee has launched investigation into the pharmaceutical industry’s conflict-of-interest-laden promotion of pain management drugs, one of which may or may not be related to one pharma-tied patient organization’s Tuesday announcement that is was closing up shop “due to irreparable economic circumstances.”

screen-shot-2012-05-09-at-73727-pmThus far, the investigation has consisted of strongly worded rebukes and requests for further disclosure to the abovementioned American Pain Foundation, among others, in the form of letters from Sens. Max Baucus and Charles Grassley. PDFs of the relevant letters can be found in this press release from Baucus’ Senate finance committee.

In the letters, the senators directly cite the investigative efforts of AHCJ members Charles Ornstein, Tracy Weber and John Fauber.

Sen. Max Baucus

Sen. Max Baucus

Ornstein, AHCJ’s board president, and Tracy Weber, his fellow ProPublica senior reporter, published their investigation into the American Pain Foundation in ProPublica and The Washington Post in December. As they write in their post on the foundation’s demise, “The group received 90 percent of its $5 million in funding in 2010 from the drug and medical-device industry, ProPublica found, and its guides for patients, journalists and policymakers had played down the risks associated with opioid painkillers while exaggerating the benefits.”

Fauber’s reporting, the result of a partnership between the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and MedPage Today, focused on the tangled web of money, organizations and influence through which the pharmaceutical industry helped propel the runaway growth of painkiller prescriptions over the past decade and a half.

Sen. Charles Grassley

Sen. Charles Grassley

In his report on the senate investigation he helped inspire, Fauber writes that the finance committee is “seeking financial and marketing records from three companies that make opioid drugs, including Oxycontin and Vicodin, and seven national organizations.” The legislators are seeking records of financial transactions between pharmaceutical manufacturers and patient groups from as far back as 1997, as well as details on any federal funding provided to the groups.

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.

Medicaid programs slow to act against system exploiters

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At ProPublica, senior reporters Charles Ornstein and Tracy Weber have published the latest turn in their ongoing analysis of conflicts of interest, problem physicians and the disciplinary systems meant to reign them in. This time, they look at Medicaid in Florida and find at least three instances when the state “allowed physicians to keep treating and prescribing drugs to the poor amid clear signs of possible misconduct.”

Their piece revolves around those key examples – two of which were, in all seriousness, brought to their attention by a Scientologist-run watchdog website – and I strongly recommend you read the whole thing for the details. Below, I’ve just highlighted the bigger picture.

In general, Ornstein and Weber found, state Medicaid programs, as well as the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which doesn’t track relevant state data, have failed to act on information which seems to strongly indicate that certain physicians are abusing or exploiting state programs.

Medicaid programs across the country have long had evidence that physicians have been prescribing risky drugs in excess and perhaps to the wrong patients. These prescriptions also racked up huge bills for the programs.

But like Florida, many states did not act on that evidence. Last year, (Sen. Charles) Grassley demanded data from each state about its highest prescribers of pain pills and antipsychotics, and he asked state and federal officials to determine whether the prescriptions written by these doctors were legitimate.

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.

Public hospitals, not nonprofits, shoulder burden of charity care

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Writing in the Contra Costa Times, Sandy Kleffman reports that while nonprofit hospitals in the East Bay are given millions in tax breaks, “The responsibility of caring for the indigent falls largely on the region’s public hospitals.”

Kleffman’s findings are based on her analysis of publicly available California Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development reports, documents which she learned to access and process at a September webinar led by AHCJ board president and ProPublica senior reporter Charles Ornstein.

Her analysis revealed a substantial imbalance in the numbers, especially between public hospitals and nonprofits. For example, Contra Costa’s county hospital provided more than three quarters of the total amount of charity care given in the country in 2010, while the six nonprofits together accounted for just under 23 percent.

For their part, representatives of nonprofit hospitals protested that the numbers do not take into account the other community benefits they provide, nor are they adjusted to compensate for the differences in demographics across each institution’s patient pool.

For more on what went into Kleffman’s report, see her sidebar on “How we made comparisons.”

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.

Pharma discloses free meals, ProPublica expands database

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In his latest report, ProPublica senior reporter and AHCJ board president Charles Ornstein explains exactly how, since its founding last October, ProPublica’s Dollars for Docs database of pharma payments to physicians has mushroomed from 30,000 entries to more than half a million. They answer, he writes, has a lot to do with free meals and other perks that pharmaceutical companies are starting to publish ahead of strict federal disclosure regulations which will go into effect in 2013.

Pharmaceutical company representatives say the meals serve an important educational purpose, and they have adopted their own set of rules for such interactions.

A voluntary code of conduct adopted by the Pharmaceutical Researchers and Manufacturers of America says that “it is appropriate for occasional meals to be offered as a business courtesy” to doctors and members of their staffs attending information presentations by sales reps.

In such cases, the guidelines say, the presentations have to “provide scientific or educational value,” and the meals should be “modest” by local standards and not part of an entertainment or recreational event. Meals for spouses and take-out meals are not appropriate, the guide says.

To put it all into perspective, Ornstein demonstrates with numbers from Pfizer that, while the meal numbers have certainly increased the number of entries in their database, they haven’t had as significant an impact upon the overall dollar amounts in question.

Relatively, the meals didn’t add up to much money. Pfizer’s meals amounted to only $18 million last year, compared to $34 million for promotional speakers and $108 million for research.

As with previous installments, Ornstein, Tracy Weber and Dan Nguyen’s database work has spawned follow-up reports around the country. In fact, the response was such that Ornstein and Weber even took the step of re-nationalizing the localizations of their story, with the follow-up “News Reports Cite Drop in Physician Speaking Fees.” Below, I’ve linked to a few notable localizations and follow-up stories. If you’ve got another one to point out, add it in the comments.

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.