Tag Archives: safety

Pain, profit and accountability in Medicaid managed care

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Joanne Kenen

About Joanne Kenen

Joanne Kenen, (@JoanneKenen) the health editor at Politico, is AHCJ’s topic leader on health reform and curates related material at healthjournalism.org. She welcomes questions and suggestions on health reform resources and tip sheets at joanne@healthjournalism.org. Follow her on Facebook.

Tom Fox/The Dallas Morning NewsA mobility and orientation specialist slowly moves an amber rope light above D’ashon Morris’ eyes during a visual stimulation therapy appointment at his Mesquite, Texas home on March 6, 2018.

A powerhouse series on patient harm under Texas’s Medicaid Managed Care program won the Shorenstein Center’s Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting and was recognized with an AHCJ award.  We’ve posted a “How I Did It” piece by the Dallas Morning News reporters, David McSwane and Andrew Chavez.

Their work showed the lack of oversight endangering about 4 million Texans, including about 720,000 who are medically fragile – both adults and children, including some in foster care. Continue reading →

Report highlights patient safety issues with EHRs and the opioid epidemic

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Rebecca Vesely

About Rebecca Vesely

Rebecca Vesely is AHCJ's topic leader on health information technology and a freelance writer. She has written about health, science and medicine for AFP, the Bay Area News Group, Modern Healthcare, Wired, Scientific American online and many other news outlets.

Photo: The.Comedian via Flickr

While technology alone cannot solve the opioid epidemic, it can play an important role in reducing overprescribing and co-prescribing opioids with other drugs that can raise the risk of overdose. A new report has offered recommendations on improving technologies in clinical settings for safer prescribing practices.

The ECRI Institute, a respected patient safety research nonprofit, and the HIMSS Electronic Health Record Association, an electronic health records (EHR) trade group, convened a workgroup to analyze health IT data from patient safety organizations and other sources. Continue reading →

Top health reporting of 2018 recognized in Awards for Excellence in Health Care Journalism

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Pia Christensen

About Pia Christensen

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.

Reporting that exposed faulty, careless or crooked practices won many top honors in this year’s Awards for Excellence in Health Care Journalism.

The 2018 winners were announced today by the Association of Health Care Journalists. The contest, now in its 15th year, drew more than 350 entries in 12 categories.

The association’s board added a new student category to the contest this year, to recognize the work of journalists training to cover health care.

Continue reading →

Getting sources on the record when loved ones are involved

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Liz Seegert

About Liz Seegert

Liz Seegert (@lseegert), is AHCJ’s topic editor on aging. Her work has appeared in NextAvenue.com, Journal of Active Aging, Cancer Today, Kaiser Health News, the Connecticut Health I-Team and other outlets. She is a senior fellow at the Center for Health Policy and Media Engagement at George Washington University and co-produces the HealthCetera podcast.

Photo : Kelsey Kremer, Des Moines RegisterLinnea and Gailen Clausen share a moment outside the central Iowa nursing home where he lives, three hours away from their northwest Iowa home. Other nursing homes rejected Gailen Clausen, 55, because his early onset dementia caused confusion and anxiety, which sometimes led him to be aggressive toward staff.

Nursing homes are supposed to be places that care for ill, frail adults — many of whom also suffer from Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia. The disease takes a terrible toll on those who have it, whether it’s forgetting who their loved ones are, forgetting how to eat or use the toilet, or sliding into a state of agitation and violence. That’s the time when more nursing homes are saying “enough.”

And, as Tony Leys writes in this article for the Des Moines Register last fall, they’re kicking them out, sometimes even if there’s nowhere else for them to go. Continue reading →

Report offers scenarios on how EHRs can pose safety risks to patients – and questions reporters should ask

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Rebecca Vesely

About Rebecca Vesely

Rebecca Vesely is AHCJ's topic leader on health information technology and a freelance writer. She has written about health, science and medicine for AFP, the Bay Area News Group, Modern Healthcare, Wired, Scientific American online and many other news outlets.

Photo: Blake Facey via Flickr

Poor usability and design flaws of electronic health records (EHRs) can pose safety risks to patients, according to recent studies.

A recently-issued report urges more oversight and post-market testing to ensure that EHRs don’t inadvertently harm patients. The report was the result of a collaboration of the Pew Charitable Trusts, the American Medical Association and MedStar Health’s National Center for Human Factors in Healthcare.

The 57-page report may be helpful for journalists who seek to familiarize themselves with some of the existing usability problems with EHRs, and how they can pose a risk to patients. Continue reading →

New tip sheet outlines what reporters should ask about security risks of medical devices

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Rebecca Vesely

About Rebecca Vesely

Rebecca Vesely is AHCJ's topic leader on health information technology and a freelance writer. She has written about health, science and medicine for AFP, the Bay Area News Group, Modern Healthcare, Wired, Scientific American online and many other news outlets.

Photo: Dennis Skley via Flickr

The global ransomware attack involving WannaCry earlier this month exposed the vulnerabilities of computer systems worldwide.

But there’s one area even more at risk: medical devices. And that risk is growing, experts warn.

In a new AHCJ tip sheet, I describe how medical device security has become a growing concern and why journalists should pay attention. Continue reading →