Health Reporting

There are few things people care about as much as local health services so it is crucial newspapers do a good job of covering health.

Much of the time, you will be writing about NHS services, but this is not all there is to it. You will also be writing about new treatments, social problems such as obesity and smoking and meeting people who have remarkable stories about how they face up to their health issues.

Structure of the NHS

The structure of the NHS is complicated but you need to make sure you fully understand it because it will make your job much easier.

You should be able to get a local structure chart from a helpful press office, but there is also a useful general NHS structure chart on the main NHS website.

You are not likely to have much to do with the Strategic Health Authority because these take more of an overview. You will have a lot of contact with the local Primary Care Trust, as this is the body that has all the money and pays people like GPs and dentists to deliver NHS services.

The PCT will also give money to other organisations such as trusts that run local hospitals and mental health services. These organisations then deliver services on the PCT's behalf.

Covering the NHS

One of the key things a health reporter does is uncovering what the NHS is doing wrong. Some people in the NHS will tell you the only impact of negative stories is they worry people who have to use local services.

This criticism has some truth and this is why you should only write about when the NHS gets it badly wrong. After all, you are not going to write an article about a hospital performing a successful operation so if you are writing about every little thing that goes wrong then people are likely to get an unfairly negative impression of how it is doing.

But it is important that health reporters are committed to uncovering things that go badly wrong. As well as being good stories in their own right, the fear of being criticised in the media can give senior NHS managers an extra incentive to do the right thing.

When I covered health for the Hull Daily Mail, for example, I wrote a story about three elderly women who were moved from their hospital beds in the middle of the night. This was picked up by the national press and you could argue that being criticised across the country meant it was less likely this would happen again.

You should also be covering the good things that happen. This is because by writing about the different services the NHS offers, you will be letting people know they exist. It is also always worth running a story when there are changes to services such as opening times and what is available there.

Patient Confidentiality

If a patient comes to you complaining about their health treatment and you think the story is good enough, you will then put the allegations to the PCT or hospitals trust.

Sometimes the press office will tell you they cannot comment on individual cases because this would breach patient confidentiality. But this is not quite true.

The NHS has clear guidelines on responding to the media when people are critical about their care. These say there is a need to balance patient confidentiality with protecting the repuations of NHS staff and organisations. Where it can be justified as being in the public interest, the NHS can give information about a patient's treatment even without their consent.

It is worth knowing the NHS rules on this so you are aware when a press office pushes the confidentiality excuse too far. You can read Confidentiality: NHS Code of Practice for more information. 

NHS Ratings

If you work in England, make sure you are on the Care Quality Commission's mailing list as they publish inspection reports on local health services. For Wales, inspections are done by the Healthcare Inspectorate Wales and in Scotland they are the responsibility of NHS Quality Improvement Scotland.

These reports tell you how good services are. As well as being potential front page stories, they are also useful because it is impossible for journalists to know how well the NHS is doing because we do not have the expertise or the access to make an informed judgement.

If the report is negative then the organisation will usually say they have been unlucky because they just missed out on the next level up. They may also add that the inspection was carried out some time ago and since then many of the areas identified have been improved. This might all be true but treat their response with caution because they all say this.

Even if there are no new reports coming out, read some of the old reports for background information. The Healthcare Commission website has an excellent search facility where you can find reports on all the services in your area.

Health Information

As a health reporter, from the beginning you will be expected to write authoritatively about a range of health conditions. This can be a problem because it is unlikely you will have any more knowledge about health than anyone else.

This is why the NHS website's health encyclopedia is useful. As well as giving you the information you need, you can be confident that anything on there is accurate.

This should always be your first port of call, but if you cannot find what you need then you can always do a wider Internet search. Bear in mind, though, that health information on the internet is not always right and you will have to make a judgement about how reliable the source is. For example, it is usually best to stick to getting information from UK websites and avoiding American ones.

Health Case Studies

Health stories can sometimes be quite dry and it is always worth looking for case studies. For example, if you were writing a story about how more people are giving up smoking in the local area then you should be looking for a local person who has recently given up. You would write 200 or so words about how they gave up and would include this mini-feature alongside the news article. 

Sometimes you can get case studies by using people you know or asking around the office for anyone who matches that description (in this case, a person who has given up smoking). But you can also put pressure on the press office that wants you to run the story. It can be amazing how quickly they can find someone if you say that without a case study the story is unlikely to make the paper.

Also, it is always worth approaching national charities to see if they have a case study from the local area. For example, if you were writing about the local survival rate for heart disease going up, then you might want to approach the British Heart Foundation to see if they know anyone local who has recovered from a heart problem.

Campaigns

With people in the UK becoming increasingly overweight, health has risen up the news agenda in recent years and is something worth considering for a newspaper campaign.

If your patch has a particular problem with obesity, smoking or junk food, then a well-designed campaign can have a real impact on people's awareness about how they can improve their health. As well as this, a good campaign can have benefits for newspaper circulation and you will get good experience managing it.

An example of a recent health campaign is the Get A Better Life Campaign, an initiative run by the Middlesbrough Evening Gazette with the local NHS and university.

Health Pages

Many papers, particularly regional dailies, have a regular health page that the health reporter is responsible for writing.

This is often there to sell advertising and it is sometimes not a priority for the newsdesk. This can mean you are expected to come up with a page of copy every week without having the proper time to find stories.

The best way to tackle this is to plan ahead to try to minimise the time this takes.

• Contact health charities and ask them for a local case study in exchange for an article raising awareness of their message. Get a calendar of awareness months/ weeks such as Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
• Offer the head of a PCT or hospital a regular column on the page.
• Tell your contacts the health pages are an easy way for them to get coverage and let them come up with story ideas.
• See if your newsdesk will allow you to use stories that do not have a local angle. If so, cut and paste these from the Press Association.
• Ask local clinics if they will give you free health and beauty treatments and then write a first-person piece about it.

Reporting Mental Health Issues

As a health reporter, you will be writing about mental health issues and you need to be careful about the language you use.

Getting this wrong can be hurtful to those who are ill and help reinforce the stigma that exists around mental illness. But it could also land you in trouble with the Press Complaints Commission because the Code of Practice says you should avoid "prejudicial or pejorative" references to a person's mental health issues.

Because of this, it is important to take the time to find out how to use appropriate language when reporting mental health and you can also download Shift's What's the Story? publication, which is about reporting on mental health and suicide.

The media has got much better in the last few years but ill-judged language still sometimes get published. The most notorious example of this is the way The Sun reported the story that Frank Bruno had been sectioned under the Mental Health Act. As well as doing a something positive, if you are report mental health issues in a responsible way then you could be in with a chance of winning an award from the Mental Health Media Awards.

Dealing With Councils

It is likely that some services will be jointly delivered by the local council and the NHS. You should know what these are and agree with the paper's political reporter how to divide up responsibility for these so they do not slip through the gaps.