Asked what the major issues in health care reporting are right now, Schwitzer said that, after analyzing 780 stories from the major newspapers and networks that feed Americans their news on health care, he and his colleagues have found that "72% of stories fail to adequately address costs." "71% fail to adequately quantify benefits."
According to a useful overview by the Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, nurses, insurers, and others are fighting to be included in the health care reform debate. We know the insurers can take care of themselves, so let’s focus on the nurses:
Hundreds of nurses last week rallied on Capitol Hill in an attempt to have their voices and opinions on health care reform heard and included as lawmakers begin to draft legislation, Roll Call reports. The rally included the California Nurses Association – National Nurses Organizing Committee, the American Academy of Nursing, the American Nurses Association and the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners. According to Roll Call, some of the groups disagree on the details of reform, including whether reform should include a single-payer system, but are united in their effort to be included in discussions on overhaul legislation. Michelle Artz, a lobbyist for ANA, said, “We want to make sure this isn’t a physician-centric dialogue” (Ackley, Roll Call, 5/18).
As far as I know, the American Academy of Nursing (AAN) wasn’t actually present at that rally. But what matters is that there is growing recognition that effective health care reform will not happen without the involvement of nurses. […]
Photo courtesy of California Nurses Association.
Some nurse activists, along with like-minded physicians, celebrated National Nurses Week by getting arrested at a Senate Finance Committee meeting on health care reform. They were protesting the meeting’s lack of representation for those who support a single-payer health care system.
Why does this matter? We’re hearing a lot lately about related issues like the intensifying debate over cutting health care costs, but most Americans, including nurses, simply don’t have time to follow the intricacies of health care reform—even if they’re well aware that over 45 million Americans don’t have guaranteed life insurance and even if (as nurses and as patients) they agree that something needs to be done about this ever-worsening problem. […]
“As time went on and more stories appeared, Fawcett said she grew convinced that information about her medical condition was being leaked by someone at UCLA. Whenever she sought treatment there, word always got out. Even when the tabloid reports were false, she said, they were based on a morsel of truth.”
ProPublica‘s Charles Ornstein has conducted an interview (co-published yesterday in the Los Angeles Times; the article includes a short video) with Farrah Fawcett about living with a terminal illness under constant media scrutiny. Fawcett has been particularly critical of the National Enquirer, and of UCLA Medical Center for not protecting her medical records from employees who may have been releasing information to the media. At one point, she even set a trap to prove her suspicions were correct. As the Obama administration makes digitized health records a priority in its health care reform plans, how might this affect patient privacy, and are you (and your institutions) ready for the issues that might arise?
–Jacob Molyneux, AJN senior editor
The American Academy of Nursing just held a news briefing on nurse-managed care and health centers as solutions for our ailing health care system. Former Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary and now president of University of Miami, Donna Shalala; Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell; Tine Hansen, CEO of the National Consortium of Nursing Centers and executive director of the Convenient Care Association; and Susan Sherman, president of the Independence Foundation, sent a coherent message: nurse practitioners (NPs) have developed an infrastructure of health centers and convenient care clinics (such as MinuteClinics) that can help our nation reform a health care delivery system that is currently unable to meet the primary health care needs of its people. […]