For media

VCU media relations guidelines and policies

To facilitate the reporting of news and events at VCU and the VCU Medical Center, the following guidelines and policies have been established for media requiring access to our campuses and personnel:

Media must arrange interviews and photo shoots with VCU faculty, staff or patients in advance through Communications and Public Relations.

To ensure confidentiality, privacy and appropriate sensitivity to students, patients and families, reporters, video crews and photographers should be accompanied by a Communications and Public Relations staff person while on the VCU campuses. Hospital security will remove unauthorized media from the VCU Medical Center as necessary.

Media may not enter student housing or position themselves at the entrances to student housing.

Patients who agree to be interviewed on the hospital premises must provide prior written consent and a CPR representative must be present.

Members of the media who require assistance after hours, on the weekends or holidays may contact Communications and Public Relations through the 24-hour paging service at (804) 759-7675. Please be aware that off-hour, on-call assistance is limited to true news emergencies, not enterprise reporting.

Patient condition reports

In compliance with federal government regulations the media must identify a patient by name to obtain information.

If a patient opts out of the hospital directory, no information can be provided. 

If an adult patient is in the hospital directory, a general condition report may be provided to the news media. The condition report may not communicate specific information about the individual, such as age, gender, marital status, occupation, time of admission, hometown, location in the hospital (i.e. ICU), diagnosis. Condition information includes the following:

• Undetermined – Patient is undergoing assessment.
• Good – Stable and progressing/satisfactory. The patient is stable and making good progress. Moving toward discharge.
• Fair – Stable/fair. The patient is responding to treatment and progress is steady.
• Serious – Critical but stable/serious. The patient’s condition is guarded.
• Critical – patient remains in a life-threatening condition.

General condition information about minor patients only will be released with the permission of the patient’s parent or legal guardian. 

Information beyond a general condition report will be provided only with the expressed written consent of the patient, or in the case of a minor, the expressed written consent of the patient’s parents or guardian.

Information about specific patients in the emergency department will not be available. We are able to release general information, such as confirming that victims of a school bus accident were brought to the ED and the range of conditions of the patients. Once patients have been admitted to hospital units, they must be identified by name to obtain condition reports.

Deaths may be reported only after the patient’s next-of-kin or legal guardian have been notified.