Media Philosophy
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One of MeritCare's No. 1 customers is the news media. We work hard to maintain a positive relationship with the media and believe the relationship is a two-way street — the media need MeritCare to gain access to health care experts, families and patients, and MeritCare needs the media to help tell its story. Following are the tenets of our program:
- Our goal is to balance the needs of our patients, the media and the needs of MeritCare (obtaining appropriate consents, not interfering with patient care, etc.)
- Another goal is to be as open and forthright with the media as is possible, while acting within the limits set by laws and regulations dealing with patient information and confidentiality. To find out more about these limits, see our HIPAA policy page.
- The medial staff or house administrators have to be the sole initial contacts for all information going to or coming from the media.
- Having media staff/house administration as the triage point ensures that:
- We are consistent in our approach to handling requests.
- Media obtain the information, interviews and visuals that they want.
- The privacy of our patients.
- Patients, families and staff are informed about media requests.
- Our general objective is to give all media equal opportunity to cover MeritCare-related news. If we proactively release information to the media, all media receive the same information from us and have the same opportunity to cover the story. On the other hand, if a reporter calls with an idea and we don't have current plans to send out our own news release, or other reporters haven't called with the same idea/request, then it is their story, and we don't notify the rest of the media.