{
  "id": "2000-june-death-and-dollars",
  "slug": "2000-june-death-and-dollars",
  "url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/2000-june-death-and-dollars.html",
  "year": 2000,
  "month": "June",
  "monthNum": 6,
  "headline": "Death and dollars",
  "kicker": "MENTAL HEALTH",
  "author_name": "Debbie Cenziper",
  "author_title": "Reporter",
  "affiliation": "The Charlotte Observer",
  "summary": "The Charlotte Observer investigated deaths in North Carolina mental health facilities by analyzing death certificate data, uncovering a lack of oversight that allowed dangerous trends and negligent caregiving to go undetected in both public and private psychiatric institutions.",
  "keywords": [
    "deaths",
    "investigation",
    "oversight"
  ],
  "topics": [
    "Data & Databases",
    "Health & Environment",
    "Investigative Methods"
  ],
  "technologies": [
    "Access"
  ],
  "full_text": "It seemed like a simple question at the time: How many people are dying under questionable circumstances in the North Carolina mental health facilities they turned to for care? In July 1999, The Charlotte Observer decided to find out. Unfortunately, no regulatory agency, advocacy group or mental health organization tracked deaths of the mentally ill and developmentally disabled in North Carolina, despite the more than $1.4 billion the state spends annually on its public health system and $500 million on private facilities. With no one watching, dangerous trends went unnoticed, and negligent or abusive caregivers went unpunished. I turned to the state's center for health statistics for a database that offered information pulled from death certificates. The database had 370,000 deaths - every death in North Carolina since 1994. With assistance from Observer database editor Ted Mellnik, I used Access to filter the database for deaths in state-run psychiatric hospitals. Then, we filtered that list by cause of death, and came up with a list of questionable deaths, deaths by such things as choking, drowning and suicide.",
  "provenance": {
    "extracted_by": "pre-v2",
    "extracted_at": "",
    "verified": true
  },
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  "html_url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/2000-june-death-and-dollars.html",
  "json_url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/2000-june-death-and-dollars.json"
}