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Unraveling the myth: Propublica’s investigation into a bad doc and a reckless hospital
The infamous “Dr. Death” case in Texas showed just how little oversight there often is of physicians. When confronted with a neurosurgeon who was maiming and killing patients, multiple hospitals looked the other way. Meanwhile, the state medical board dragged its feet in taking punitive action, and Texas malpractice law discouraged private lawsuits. Now, ProPublica…
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Reporting duo investigates industry sway over the FDA
Reporters Jeanne Lenzer and Shannon Brownlee have been collaborating on articles that take aim at problems with medical evidence since they met at an AHCJ conference in 2005. Their latest work is a three-part series on industry influence at the FDA. It’s being published in The Lever, an investigative outlet focused on exposing corporate corruption.…
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Hospitals don’t always test AI for accuracy and bias, study says
New research published in Health Affairs indicates that hospitals often don’t assess AI models using their patient data before deploying them, potentially putting patients at risk. So-called local evaluation to check how well a predictive model performs in the unique setting of a particular hospital — as opposed to testing on a generic dataset —…
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How to uncover immediate jeopardy citations — and how AHCJ can help
Every year dozens of hospitals violate federal safety regulations so severely that patients are in imminent danger of serious injury or death. Yet often these major infractions — which are referred to as immediate jeopardy — go unreported to the public. Regulators and hospitals are not obliged to announce immediate jeopardy citations, which means journalists…
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Let’s cool the hype about ‘ice’ treatment for breast cancer
Thousands of women with early-stage breast cancer may soon have a less invasive alternative to lumpectomy: freezing the tumor. Cryoablation — where a needle delivers liquid nitrogen into the breast to destroy cancer cells with ultra-cold temperatures — causes almost no pain or scarring, entails no recovery time, and costs less than removing cancer with…
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A new publication fights spin in research abstracts
Read the abstract of a randomized controlled trial of doula home visits for low-income mothers and you might conclude that the intervention is a solid public policy win. “Among higher risk-taking mothers, the intervention was related to less intrusiveness during early infancy, less psychological and physical aggression during toddlerhood, more sensitive parenting attitudes, and greater…
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Obstetric care continues to vanish from rural areas
When rural hospitals go into the red, they often have little choice but to stop delivering babies. The result can be terrifying. Harrowing roadside births have been documented in news stories and online. Maternal unit closures that put women and their babies in rural areas at heightened risk of complications and death aren’t a new…
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