Charles Ornstein
Charles Ornstein is managing editor, local, overseeing ProPublica’s local initiatives. These include offices in the Midwest, South, Southwest and Northwest, a joint initiative with the Texas Tribune, and the Local Reporting Network, which works with local news organizations to produce accountability journalism on issues of importance to their communities.
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Charles Ornstein is managing editor, local, overseeing ProPublica’s local initiatives. These include offices in the Midwest, South, Southwest and Northwest, a joint initiative with the Texas Tribune, and the Local Reporting Network, which works with local news organizations to produce accountability journalism on issues of importance to their communities. From 2008 to 2017, he was a senior reporter covering health care and the pharmaceutical industry. He then worked as a senior editor and deputy managing editor.
Prior to joining ProPublica, he was a member of the metro investigative projects team at the Los Angeles Times. In 2004, he and Tracy Weber were lead authors on a series on Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center, a troubled hospital in South Los Angeles. The articles won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for public service, the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award, and the Sigma Delta Chi Award for Public Service.
In 2009, he and Weber worked on a series of stories that detailed serious failures in oversight by the California Board of Registered Nursing and nursing boards around the country. The work was a finalist for the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for public service.
Projects edited or co-edited by Ornstein have won the Pulitzer Prize for public service, the Selden Ring Award for Investigative Reporting, the Scripps Howard Impact Award, the IRE Award, the Online Journalism Award and other major journalism honors.
He previously worked at the Dallas Morning News, where he covered health care on the business desk and worked in the Washington bureau. Ornstein is a past president of the Association of Health Care Journalists and an adjunct journalism professor at Columbia University. Ornstein is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania.
Meet the Seven Reporters Joining Us on ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network
They were selected from a pool of 239 applications and will cover a diverse array of topics, including conflicts of interest, housing, workplace safety, mental health and criminal justice.
Local Reporting Network
Some U.S. Hospitals Don’t Put Americans First for Liver Transplants
At a time when there aren’t enough livers for ailing Americans, wealthy foreigners fly here for transplants.
VA Delays Key Agent Orange Decisions
Since March 2016, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has been weighing whether to expand Agent Orange benefits to Vietnam vets with bladder cancer and hypothyroidism, as well as other ailments. It keeps missing its own deadlines to act.
Pressure Mounts on Insurance Companies to Consider Their Role in Opioid Epidemic
Another lawmaker is asking insurers whether their policies have made it easier for patients to access cheaper, more addictive drugs over less addictive alternatives. Meanwhile, the insurance industry trade group pledged additional steps to combat inappropriate prescribing.
Senator Calls on Insurers to Improve Access to Non-Opioid Pain Treatments
The move follows a story by ProPublica and The New York Times detailing how insurance companies and pharmacy benefit managers have made it easier to get opioid painkillers than less risky alternatives.
Attorneys General in 37 States Urge Insurance Industry to Do More to Curb Opioid Epidemic
They want insurers to re-examine coverage policies that, as ProPublica and The New York Times reported Sunday, may be driving patients toward addictive painkillers.
Amid Opioid Crisis, Insurers Restrict Pricey, Less Addictive Painkillers
Drug companies and doctors have been accused of fueling the opioid crisis, but some question whether insurers have played a role, too.
Why Are Drug Prices So High? We’re Curious, Too.
The New York Times and ProPublica have teamed up to investigate who is to blame for skyrocketing drug prices — and have turned up some surprising answers.
Risky, Overused Medications Prescribed Far Less Often in the Aloha State
Medicare patients in Hawaii take fewer opioid painkillers and fewer antibiotics, on average, than those in any other state. Physicians and health policy experts cite demographics and healthier lifestyles as possible reasons why.
Updated: Prescriber Checkup
Medicare’s popular prescription-drug program serves more than 42 million people and pays for more than one of every four prescriptions written nationwide. Use this tool to find and compare doctors and other providers in Part D in 2015.