IRE Radio Podcast | Hazardous Health Care

It's not easy prying information out of hospitals and health departments. On our podcast this week we’ll hear from journalists who successfully negotiated for the data or documents they needed to fuel an investigation. Here’s the lineup:

• Gary Dotson of the Belleville News-Democrat shares the paper’s 2012 story about the state’s failure to investigate after disabled adults living at home died from abuse or neglect.

• Robin Fields of ProPublica explains how she successfully argued for data on dialysis facilities across the country.
• Ellen Gabler of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel discusses “Deadly Delays,” an investigation that exposed processing delays that put newborn lives at risk.

You can find and download previous podcast episodes on iTunes or our Soundcloud page.

EPISODE NOTES

Looking for links to the stories, resources and events we discussed on this week's podcast? We've collected them for you.

• Members only: Read “Hidden suffering, hidden death,” a 2012 Belleville News-Democrat story on several disabled adults dying from abuse and neglect. You can also download a questionnaire that explains how the story came together.
• Explore ProPublica’s multi-part investigation on dialysis and use the Dialysis Facility Tracker built using CMS data.
• Read Ellen Gabler’s investigation, “Deadly Delays,” on the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s website.
• Want to learn more about the reporting process for Deadly Delays? Watch our Google+ Hangout on the story, read Gabler’s Transparency Watch post, and listen to more audio on IRE Radio.
• Learn how to use mail merge to send large number of personalized emails (or FOIA requests)
• Get story structure tips from Pulitzer winner Jacqui Banaszynski on the IRE Radio blog.
• Help us expand the NICAR Database Library by suggesting a data set for us to add to our collection.
• Want to attend one of our annual conferences or boot camps? Consider applying for a fellowship or scholarship.
• Go behind the story with New Jersey Advance Media reporter Chris Baxter. Learn how he used public and confidential records to shed light on a controversial death investigation.