PBS Documentary Focuses on Nation's Healthcare Crisis

Salt Lake City — As the national debate over healthcare cost control and deficit reduction heats up, PBS is preparing for the national premiere of Money & Medicine, a one-hour documentary that explores the medical, ethical, and financial challenges of containing healthcare spending.

To watch the Money & Medicine video in its entirety, and read more about the PBS documentary, visit PBS online: Money & Medicine – produced by Roger Weisberg

Money & Medicine aired locally on KUED, Ch. 7, on Tuesday, September 25, at 7 p.m. Following the documentary at 8 p.m., KUED hosted a special, Money & Medicine: Utah Perspectives, with Brent James, MD, chief quality officer of Intermountain Healthcare, and Rich McKeown, president and CEO of Leavitt Partners and former Chief of Staff for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Filmed at both Intermountain Medical Center and UCLA Medical Center, Money & Medicine features intimate interviews with some of the nation's leading healthcare policy experts and allows patients to share their personal experiences. The healthcare crisis has shifted in recent years from access to cost, and some studies suggest that a third of all healthcare expenditures are unnecessary. The documentary examines difficult topics such as end-of-life treatment decisions made by patients and their families, the controversy surrounding testing and screening as well as astounding treatment variations nationally among patients receiving discretionary procedures, and the debate of elective Caesarean sections and pre-term inductions that may increase the medical risk to patients and their babies.

Award-winning producer, Roger Weisberg, chose Intermountain as one of his examples where clinical outcomes are excellent and costs are lower, based on a study by the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice. With permission from patients and clinical staff, a film crew is spent two weeks at Intermountain talking with patients and physicians about how decisions are made, how care is delivered, and how individual patients are affected.

Money & Medicine is a production of Public Policy Productions in association with PBS affiliate WNET. As founder and president of Public Policy Productions, Weisberg has produced 31 documentaries on a variety of social issues that have aired in prime time on PBS and networks around the world. His films have won more than 100 awards, including Peabody, Emmy, and duPont-Columbia awards, as well as two Academy Award nominations.