A solution found for a tricky problem (02/01/06)

What's news? And what's nobody else's business?

What's public? And what's private?

Answers to those questions have been debated for years, and they've been evolving as well, just to make the debate more complicated.

Take something as — misleadingly — simple as the hospital news which appears in the daily paper.

For years — no, make that decades — virtually every person who was admitted to Jay County Hospital had his or her name published in the paper under that little fixture known as the hospital news.

It was a homey touch. People were so closely connected as a community that everyone assumed his or her neighbors would want to know the news.

Times have changed.

At least three factors have been at work to make something that used to be so simple and straightforward into something much more complex.

The first is our personal sense of privacy.

Where, 30 years ago, the old joke in Jay County was that everyone knew what everyone else was doing but they read the newspaper to find out who got caught, these days folks are much more particular about what personal information spills out into the public arena.

Some things are still public, of course, most notably the legal system and the workings of local government.

Get sued? It's fair game for the press to report it. Fined in court? Newspapers have an absolute privilege to report the information as long as they get the facts straight.

But something like admission to the hospital, or dismissal for that matter, is less clear.

And then there's the related matter of personal security.

I'm not sure we live in an age with more crime, but I do know we live in an era when there's more anxiety about crime.

So folks who are admitted to the hospital are more anxious about letting people know their houses may be empty.

The third factor is the federal government and a little thing called HIPAA (the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act), which is a legislative construct dealing with questions of privacy and security.

Under that law, patient privacy becomes pre-eminent, even if it complicates life for both hospitals and newspapers.

The result is that the hospital news published in the paper has become less and less an accurate portrayal of how the hospital is used.

It used to be, when you checked into the hospital, an individual had to opt out of the report to be published in the paper.

Today, when you check in, an individual has to opt in to be published.

The result? Fewer names in the paper, protected privacy, but also a less accurate picture of the hospital's activities.

We've been increasingly frustrated by the situation but didn't know how to approach it until we received a call from Pam Bennett, who handles community relations for Jay County Hospital.

Turns out, folks at the hospital were as uncomfortable about the situation as we were.

They might have 25-30 patients on hand, while the publishable report said, "Admissions: None."

Fortunately, with a minimum of fuss, we've figured out a solution that meets our needs in terms of reporting the news, the hospital's needs in terms of letting the public know it is being used, and the patient's needs in terms of privacy.

Beginning this week, news from Jay County Hospital will say something like this: "Admissions: Five, including Jack Ronald, Portland."

In accordance with federal law, we won't be messing with patient privacy. But we'll still be providing the community with accurate information on how the hospital is being used.

It was a complicated problem, but we think we've come up with a simple solution.[[In-content Ad]]