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April 27, 2006
Readers first
You can read Concord Hospital’s response to my Tuesday blog entry by clicking on “Comments” at the end of it. Other than to say that I stand by what I wrote in “Missing voices,” I don’t want to get into a public back-and-forth with the hospital. But I think it is worth adding a few words on the way I think our relationship with the local medical community should work.
I say this, I believe, as a representative not only of Monitor journalists but also of the public. Readers of the Monitor and patients of Concord’s medical community are the same people. As editor, I try to put readers first. They have an interest in Monitor reporters having good access to Concord Hospital doctors.
When the Monitor reports on a medical development – say a story from the New England Journal of Medicine on a new asthma or autism study – the paper’s readers want to hear what local physicians have to say. It would be a simple matter for a reporter to call the Family Health Center or Penacook Family Physicians and leave a message at the desk that she would like to talk to a local doctor about the new study. If the doctor had time to call back, she could. If not, we’d go without.
The same is true for our Sunday story about patients’ increasing use of the internet to research their medical conditions. The reporter could call 10 primary-care practices. She would get a range of responses. Some wouldn’t call back, some would say they had no time, three might return the call.
Over time, the reporter would develop a source list: primary-care physicians who are accessible and don’t mind discussing medical issues publicly. This is the way reporters on all our other beats – from politics to business to education – do their job, and it serves them and the public well.
I appreciate the need for a PR office at the hospital. The professionals there – and they are professionals – have sometimes helped us gain access to report on medicine as it is practiced in Concord. When we have a complaint about a simple matter like getting the condition of an accident victim, they respond promptly and helpfully.
I understand that they -- and we -- have to work with patient privacy concerns. I understand that there are other restraints on access. But filtering every request for a conversation with a Concord doctor through the PR office is burdensome and unnecessary. It obviously causes more work for the PR office. And clearly, in many cases the PR office has more important things to do than find a physician willing to talk to a reporter.
The system hasn’t worked for us, and it is not in the public interest – the reading public or the health-care-consuming public. It is hard to see how it is in the medical community’s interest either.
Posted by Mike Pride at April 27, 2006 07:16 PM