_Hazardous Hospitals

ProPublica healthcare reporters Marshall Allen and Olga Pierce, along with PBS Frontline’s Tom Jennings and Sam Bailey collaborated on an interactive documentary, Hazardous Hospitals, about risks for patients in the healthcare system. Put together in four days in 2013 at a hackathon, it covered issues of quality of hospital care and patient harm. The story is told through video interviews, GIFs, text, questionnaires, and social media. Propublica reporters faciliate discussions with their patient harm facebook community. The group, which has about 2,500 members, is open, so all posts are publicly accessible to non-members as well. Journalists and patients regularly interact with each other in the group to discuss issues of patient care, which sometimes even generates story leads.