The seeds for the Welcome Home Project were sown while I was interviewing Dan Simmons, a program analyst for an anti-violence program in Oakland. Formerly incarcerated himself, Simmons knows what it takes to stay out of prison. “We put most of our resources towards the 65% of former inmates that re
For La Clínica de la Raza, long a source of care for a diverse Oakland community, the ACA has increased the clinic's share of insured patients. But financial pressures are still a constant reality, and the problem will worsen dramatically if federal funding isn't renewed.
When freelance reporter Kit Stolz began reporting on the obesity disparity between two towns in Ventura County, he found officials in one town happy to talk while those in the other where hard to get on the line. In this post, he shares some of his missteps and lessons learned along the way.
Medicare made a huge step forward this week in announcing that it would no longer pay for health care without taking into account whether the care was any good. The move could dramatically accelerate changes to how we pay for health care in this country.
Learning how to locate and use patient discharge data will make your reporting stronger and provide you with objective evidence for evaluating hospitals' claims. Such data can also lead to new story threads. Here's a quick-start guide.
When you’re searching for a question to guide your data reporting, it's worth thinking about scope and impact. How big or small is the problem you are trying to explain or expose?
Sign-ups for insurance on the federal and state health exchanges end in less than a month, and the state's push to enroll more Latinos appears to be paying off. Meanwhile, safety net providers such as Clinica Sierra Vista are focused on both signing up and retaining patients.
Health care providers aren't perfect. None of us are. But in a recent report on patient experiences, California physician groups were assigned a rating on a scale of 0 to 100. Not one group managed to score in the 80s or 90s. What's going on here?
On Wednesday, the White House hosted a summit on early education where President Obama touted a $1 billion public-private spending package to bolster high-quality preschool and Early Head Start programs. That may sound like an education story, but it's worth remembering it's a health story, too.
Millions of Californians still don't have health insurance. Undocumented people don't qualify for Obamacare benefits, and many others still find coverage too expensive. Leaburn Alexander, a 53-year-old night janitor at a hotel near San Francisco International Airport, is among the latter.
