The Association of Health Care Journalists has awarded five journalists the Commonwealth Fund–supported AHCJ Reporting Fellowships on Health Care Performance. The program, in its fourth year, is meant to help journalists understand and report on the performance of local health care markets and the U.S. health system as a whole.
The 2014 fellows will be:
- Karen Brown, a reporter and producer at New England Public Radio, who will study how primary care physicians are being prepared for a future that puts them at the center of an increasingly complex health landscape.
- David Pittman, a Washington correspondent for MedPage Today, who will compare state Medicaid models and the impact of innovations aimed at improving health care quality while lowering costs.
- Sarah Gantz, a staff writer at the Baltimore Business Journal, who will examine how Maryland’s unique all-payer system impacts the number, type, quality, and financial condition of hospitals in Baltimore.
- Michaela Gibson Morris, a health care reporter with the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, who will focus on the status of the primary care infrastructure in rural Mississippi and what it will take to bolster and maintain it in the future.
- Lola J. Butcher, an independent journalist in Springfield, Mo., who will report on the migration of cancer care from physician-owned clinics and community centers to hospital outpatient departments and how it affects patients, oncologists, hospitals and payers, especially Medicare.