Categories: OLD Media Moves

Hospital company fires employee it suspected talked to reporter

Psychiatric hospital company Universal Health Services fired one employee it suspected of talking to a reporter and threatened others, according to a story from Rosalind Adams of BuzzFeed.

Adams writes, “It was just one of many measures the hospital giant took to counter our two-year investigation, which revealed internal surveillance videos of UHS employees choking and dragging patients and which led the state of Oklahoma to investigate a UHS hospital executive for abuse and neglect, and to cut off state funding.

“To deal with our series, UHS didn’t just implement a crisis PR plan. It also fired an employee that the company believed to have spoken to a reporter; it sued a former employee it alleges leaked damaging internal surveillance videos; it threatened to sue other employees; at least one facility held a series of town hall meetings to warn employees from speaking with us; it conducted “in-depth interviews” with nearly two dozen staff, then distributed a public apology that two of them signed; it enlisted one of the most powerful law firms in the United States; it built multiple, high-production-value websites specifically designed to overcome the reputational damage that our reporting might cause.

“In a statement, UHS disputed our coverage, as it has in the past, calling it sensationalized and based on anecdotes that aren’t representative of the quality care it provides overall.”

Read more here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.