List date(s) this work was published or aired.
March 30-2012-April 6, 2012
Provide a brief synopsis of the story or stories, including any significant findings.
Bernice … “Richard” … “Peter” … “Rogelio” … “Rudy” … “Whitey.” The names are familiar to emergency medical tech personnel because they treat them so often. The roll call is part of a tiny population in San Diego that costs the city $20 million a year in emergency medical services. The five-part series dives deep into this phenomenon — dubbed frequent users by professionals in the emergency medical community — and paints a shocking picture of broken lives, frustrated, sometimes morale-broken caregivers and government policies that employ enormous resources and substantial monies, but do little to improve the health of the population they’re serving. Please see the VIDEOS with this project, the result of much work and dedication — the link to them is provided in this submission.
Explain types of documents, data or Internet resources used. Were FOI or public records act requests required? How did this affect the work?
Among the data and research scoured — data on local emergency response time and numbers of frequent users served, ER admissions data, research data on insurance status of frequent users, CMS and Congressional Budget Office data on health care costs, HHS documents on Disproportionate Share Hospitals, numerous research studies of frequent users and their costs — in dollars, time, worker morale — and other research assessments of programs for frequent users.
Explain types of human sources used.
San Diego city medical director, UC San Diego medical center ER doctors, San Diego homeless shelter officials, San Diego homeless program officials and staff, homeless program officials in other cities, VA officials, national experts on homelessness,state and national experts on health care costs, national emergency medical technician officials, local firefighters/paramedics, San Diego police officials, and a score or more of mostly homeless frequent users of the emergency medical system.
Results:
Laudatory comments by all of those organizations, agencies, experts and programs involved in study of and treatment of frequent users. There was a failed attempt to introduce state legislation that would have created “health teams” to offer coordinated care to frequent users.
Follow-up (if any). Have you run a correction or clarification on the report or has anyone come forward to challenge its accuracy? If so, please explain.
No.
Advice to other journalists planning a similar story or project.
Plan to spend a lot of late nights in fairly unsavory places to find out what is really going on in the health lives of the urban homeless. And try to find an ER guide — a doctor who is willing to open the ER to you so that you can see the consequences of government policies. There are committed health workers everywhere. Find them. Ditto for innovative programs that attempt to ameliorate the circumstance of frequent users. And good luck.