Fewer hospitals signed on to receive staff than the Department of Health and Senior Services anticipated. Within the first few weeks, some hospitals faced no-shows, while the company’s hourly rates — up to $215 an hour for some nurses and $550 an hour for doctors — were too high for other hospitals to afford after state funds ran out.

The USA TODAY Network in New England and the Documenting COVID-19 project partnered to investigate how New England became a positive data anomaly in terms of COVID death reporting accuracy. Across the region, excess deaths during the pandemic are almost completely accounted for by official COVID deaths. In other parts of the country, these COVID deaths were missed or certified incorrectly as other causes.

The tech team has been busy working on improvements to both our FOIA filing platform as well as DocumentCloud, our document analysis and hosting tool. For MuckRock, we gave a nice graphical bump to our article images — doubling the resolution — and fixed a bug that prevented sharing cloned request links with logged-out users. With DocumentCloud, the incorrectly labeled “rotate” button now does what it says on the tin. Plus: More localized versions coming soon!

In July 2020, Gov. Mike Parson signed into law a potentially sweeping change for coroners across the state of Missouri, many of whom lack medical or forensic training. The law, which creates a governor-appointed commission to write new standards and training for coroners, was written in response to the botched investigation into the 2011 death of 27-year-old Jayke Minor in Fayette and pressure from the Missouri Coroners’ and Medical Examiners’ Association.

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