GROUCHO: The Tower Marx the spot MARCH 9, 2012
Sisters boys triumph • D1
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NEW BISHOP, LOCAL ROOTS • C1 Walden blasts Forest Service over loss of SUV commercial By Andrew Clevenger The Bulletin
WASHINGTON — Frustrated that the U.S. Forest Service denied a permit to film a Mercedes-Benz commercial in the Deschutes National Forest last month, Rep. Greg Walden, R-Hood River, fired off an angry letter Thursday to the agency’s chief, Tom Tidwell. “The only thing that squelched an estimated $155,000 injecWalden tion to the local economy — on a single Wednesday in the middle of the winter — was bureaucratic foot-dragging by the U.S. Forest Service that drove the company to film their commercial elsewhere,” Walden’s letter states. In January, Portland-based location scout Doug Reynolds received a permit from Deschutes County to film on the Cascades Lakes Highway on Feb. 15. Eager to showcase the carmaker’s ML class sport utility vehicles in winter weather, Reynolds arranged to have local snowmobilers groom the snow-covered road to make it passable for a camera car and “hero” car. But the shoot, which would have brought a crew of more than 50 people into the area, hit a snag when Reynolds asked the Forest Service for a permit. Despite a last-ditch effort to reach an agreement during a weekend meeting at Walden’s Bend office, the necessary permit did not materialize. The producers pulled the plug on the Oregon shoot and relocated to California. See Mercedes / A6
You’re not equally safe in all hospitals. Five in Oregon scored worse than the national average on a key measure.
Measuring
patient safety • New federal data show some hospitals have higher complication rates The Bulletin
F
ive Oregon hospitals score worse than the national average on a key measure of patient safety for Medicare patients. Oregon Health & Science University, Legacy Emanuel Medical Center, Providence St. Vincent Medical Center, Providence Portland Medical Center and Good Samaritan Regional Medical Center all have a higher rate of potentially serious complications of care than the national average, according to an analysis released by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. All other Oregon hospitals scored within the national average, according to the analysis. None scored better. “If a hospital has a high rate of (these complications),” said Dr. Patrick Romano, a professor of medicine at the University of California, Davis, “then I think that consumers are entitled to ask some questions about why that is and what the hospital is doing about it and whether that’s changing.” See Safety / A5
TODAY’S WEATHER Mostly sunny High 64, Low 31 Page C6
Day 2: Five Oregon hospitals score worse than average on a key measure.
Performance on key patient safety metric Using hospital billing data and methods developed by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Medicare published patient safety scores for all U.S. hospitals. In Oregon, five ranked worse than the national average on the composite measure, which averages safety scores on a number of individual measures. Hospital
Overall safety rating
St. Charles Bend
No different from U.S. average
St. Charles Redmond
No different from U.S. average
Oregon Health & Science University
Worse than U.S. average
Legacy Emanuel Medical Center
Worse than U.S. average
Providence St. Vincent Medical Center
Worse than U.S. average
Providence Portland Medical Center
Worse than U.S. average
Good Samaritan Regional Medical Center
Worse than U.S. average
B1-4 E3 F1-4 E4-5 E5, F2 E3 C4 E1-8
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The Bulletin
A Washington attorney accused of being complicit in sending inflated foreclosure costs to government agencies, lenders and the public responded this week that the allegations are a “disingenuous attack” wholly lacking in merit. The response was filed Wednesday with the Oregon State Bar on behalf of David E. Fennell, who co-owns two affiliated firms, Northwest Trustee Services Inc. and Foreclosure Expeditors/Initiators LLC, more commonly called FEI. Fennell was replying to an ethics complaint filed against him with the bar in January. His attorney, Bradley F. Tellam of the Portland firm Stoel Rives, says in the document that Fennell knew nothing about and had no hand in FEI’s billing arrangements. Tellam also says the amounts FEI has charged for its foreclosure services are reasonable by industry standards. The cost in question in the bar complaint is for legal foreclosure notices in newspaper classified ads, one step in the complex foreclosure process set out in state law. The complaint says that FEI sent bills for legal notices that were about 18 percent higher — roughly $180 per foreclosure — than the actual cost of service. FEI sent those bills to Northwest Trustee, which then asked consumers, government agencies and lenders for reimbursement. See Foreclosures / A3
Source: Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services
For hospital scores on individual measures, see Page A5
Hefty price for green light bulb The Washington Post
Oregon behind other states in data transparency The comparisons in the accompanying article on patient safety use Medicare data. It gives a good snapshot of what is going on in hospitals because Medicare patients make up a good percentage of patients at most hospitals. But better data, using all patient records, does exist. Most hospitals around the country track and report complications of medical care. While many states make this information public, Oregon does not.
That means that the best information about an individual hospital’s quality and safety may be kept from the public. “We operate in a health care system that consumes 17 percent of the gross domestic product and is more than 50 percent publicly funded, so I think taxpayers have a right to know what the outcomes are,” said Dr. Patrick Romano, a professor of medicine at the University of California, Davis, and an expert on patient safety. “The majority of states will either release the data in a way that identi-
fies individual hospitals or they have a mechanism for giving approval for such releases,” Romano continued. “Oregon is behind the times here.” Oregon does make some limited information public through a stateadministered database that includes records from every patient admitted into an Oregon hospital. Without giving identifying information, such as a name, this database includes some useful information, including where the patient was treated and the primary diagnosis on admission. See Data / A5
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The Bulletin
GOP: Gingrich, Santorum jockey for South, A3
Day 1: Oregon hospitals say patients aren’t as safe as they could be.
By Betsy Q. Cliff
By Betsy Q. Cliff
TOP NEWS
Part 2 of a 2-day series
Attorney: Foreclosure cost inflation allegations are baseless
Bulletin reporter Betsy Q. Cliff wrote this story while participating in The California Endowment Health Journalism Fellowships, a program of the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communications and Journalism. www.reportingonhealth.org
WASHINGTON — The U.S. government last year announced a $10 million award, dubbed the “L Prize,” for any manufacturer that could create a “green” but affordable light Inside bulb. • Cracking Energy Secthe LED retary Steven barrier, Chu said the A2 prize would spur industry to offer the costly bulbs, known as LEDs, at prices “affordable for American families.” There was also a “Buy America” component. Portions of the bulb would have to be made in the United States. Now the winning bulb is on the market. The price is $50. See Light bulb / A2
Feather cells tell of a tiny dinosaur’s crowlike sheen By John Noble Wilford New York Times News Service
Sexual drive, not flight, may have been the main reason for the feather color and pattern of the microraptor, a four-winged dinosaur that lived some 130 million years ago in what is now northeastern China. New research by U.S. and Chi-
nese scientists shows that the animal had a predominantly glossy iridescent sheen in hues of black and blue, like a crow. This the earliest known evidence of iridescent color in feathers. The animal also had a striking pair of long, narrow tail feathers, perhaps to call attention to itself in courtship. In the study, published online
Thursday in the journal Science, the researchers compared the patterns of pigment-containing cells from a microraptor fossil with those of modern birds. The cells, known as melanosomes, were narrow and arranged in a distinctive pattern, as in the case of living birds with glossy feathers. See Dinosaur / A6
New York Times News Service
An artist’s conception of a microraptor.