For Media Inquiries Contact

Kristina Murray
Media Relations Manager
kmurra11@bilh.org
617-667-7372
For media inquiries after hours, call the page operator at 617-667-4700; ask for the Media Relations staff member on call (Pager ID# 33880).

Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital–Needham welcomes the opportunity to work with the media. To facilitate that process, we have established the following guidelines to request information or interviews:

  • Please email Kristina Murray to arrange all interviews, photo shoots or journalist-related requests. If your request is urgent or outside of 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 must always be accompanies by a media relations staff person while at BID Needham. We follow American Hospital Association guidelines in meeting patient privacy guidelines contained in the Health Insurance and Portability Act.
  • 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 Conditions

BID Needham is committed to protecting the privacy and confidentiality of our patients and their medical information as mandated by the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). To help ensure 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–Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. After hours, on weekends and on holidays, the on-call public affairs staff member should be paged through the BID Needham page operator, 617-667-4700.

Patient Condition Definitions

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

We will 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 next-of-kin have 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.