Tim Darragh’s beat involves the business of health care (see hospital security challenge), health-care policies (see tobacco settlement), health issues (hip surgery risk) and diseases (new virus spreads). Stories were chosen to reflect the beat’s range and Darragh’s dexterity and knowledge for covering that range. He was the first to find and report that Pennsylvania’s tobacco money settlement, and the funding for uncompensated hospital care that it covered, were in jeopardy. Darragh was the only Pennsylvania reporter to recognize the significance in the routine court story. He knew when the Pennsylvania’s $330 million tobacco settlement was challenged, the result could devastate the fund set up to help hospitals pay for charity cases. Since that fact wasn’t spelled out in the lawsuit, most reporters had no idea what was at stake. For the hospital security story, Darragh was able, through much effort, to get the hospitals to provide policy and procedure information. The local hospitals are not covered under Pennsylvania’s Right to Know law, so Darragh had to compel the hospitals to cooperate. The story benefits from their responses, as well as information Darragh found through the Pennsylvania Health Safety Authority and the state Department of Health. Through his research, he found that it’s rare for people to leave hospitals without permission and that the death at St. Luke’s Hospital was tied to a policy breach. Darragh’s attention to the monthly state Health Department reports often reap benefits, as was the case with the hip surgery story. When a death at a local hospital was attributed to “Bone Cement Implantation Syndrome,” Darragh pursued a deeper story, found a US Food and Drug Administration database of such deaths and constructed a strong explanatory piece on the risk posed by certain bone glues. The story would nudge readers to discuss the issue with their doctors when considering hip replacements. As a good beat reporter, Darragh is always on the lookout for new and recurring viruses. So when he heard about chikungunya from the West Nile making an appearance on the East Coast, he called the state Department of Health and found four suspected cases in our area. His story responsibly alerted readers to an infectious disease in their midst.
