Grading the Media on Healthcare Reporting

Primary care physicians as well as most other physicians are constantly being questioned by patients about things they have seen, heard or read in the media. Many of us encourage our patients to research their diseases and bring us questions, but the media is sometimes very lax in their reporting accuracy.

Professor Gary Schwitzer who teaches Health Journalism at the University of Minnesota is taking a very proactive approach to combat this problem. His goals are to grade health stories on the ABCs:Accuracy, Balance, Completeness, support excellence in health journalism, and support consumers' informed decision-making.

His vehicle to accomplish this is FIMDM Health News Review, a website where the quality of major press articles and TV reports on clinical topics are reviewed and graded by medical experts and then given a rating of zero to five stars. Reports that fail to meet criteria like costs, potential benefits, risks, and outcomes will get dinged.

The website is very helpful and it makes sorting through some of the media claims much easier.
I would encourage everyone to bookmark the page and use it as a reference tool when evaluating what you see, read and hear.