For the Media

Media Relations for Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital–Needham

BID Needham welcomes the opportunity to work with the media. Please note: This information is for journalists and news media only. For patient care and other questions, please contact your doctor or hospital directly.

Media Requests

We have established the following process to request information and interviews:

• Email the media relations manager to arrange all interviews, photo shoots or journalist-related requests. If your request is urgent or outside regular business hours, a communications staff member is available at all times by calling the hospital page operator at 617-667-4700 and requesting to be connected to pager #33880.
• Advance notice and approval for on-site interviews are necessary.
• To ensure patient confidentiality, privacy and appropriate sensitivity to all patients and families, reporters, film crews and photographers always must be accompanied by a media relations staff member while at BID Needham. We follow American Hospital Association guidelines in meeting patient privacy guidelines contained in the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).
• It is BID Needham's policy not to allow photographs or grant interviews — on camera or by telephone — with patients who have been involved in high-profile accidents or news events during their hospital stay. Reporters may seek interviews only after patients have been discharged and returned home.

Patient Condition Reports

BID Needham is committed to protecting the privacy and confidentiality of our patients and their medical information as mandated by HIPAA. To help honor those rights, we have adopted the following definitions for reporting patient conditions to the media. They have been approved by the American Hospital Association, are widely used by hospitals nationwide and are familiar to most journalists.

If you are a reporter looking for a condition report, please call BID Needham’s communications office at 781-453-3000 during regular business hours, Monday through Friday from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm. After hours, on weekends and on holidays, you may contact the on-call media relations staff member through the BID Needham page operator at 617-667-4700.

Patient Condition Definitions

You must have the patient's full name to request information.

We only provide one-word descriptions about a patient's condition: "undetermined," "good," "fair," "serious" or "critical." Please note "stable" is not used.

We will acknowledge the death of a patient, but only after the next-of-kin has been notified.

In the event of a large scale disaster, we will attempt to provide non-specific information about patients brought to the medical center.