Charles Ornstein

Managing Editor, Local

Photo of 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. 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.

Why Are Obstetricians Among the Top Billers for Group Psychotherapy in Illinois?

Illinois leads the country in group psychotherapy sessions in Medicare, and some top billers aren’t mental health specialists. The state’s Medicaid program has cracked down, but federal officials have not.

Fanny Pack Mixup Unravels Massive Medicare Fraud Scheme

Two secretaries in a doctor’s office have pleaded guilty and a pharmacy owner faces charges in a scam that Medicare allowed to thrive for more than two years.

Medicare Billing Outliers Often Have Disciplinary Problems, Too

As news organizations analyze data on Medicare payments, doctors with disciplinary records keep popping up.

Medicare Taken For a Ride By Ambulance Companies in New Jersey

The Garden State costs Medicare more than any other state for ambulance rides per kidney dialysis patient. A new crackdown is set to start, but at one big dialysis center, ambulances remain everywhere.

Medicare Overpays Billions for Office Visits, Patient Evaluations

The findings by the inspector general of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services complement a recent ProPublica review that found many doctors bill for services very differently than their peers.

Following Abuses, Medicare Tightens Reins on Its Drug Program

Medicare gives itself the power to ban physicians if they prescribe medications in abusive ways. The action follows a series of articles by ProPublica documenting inappropriate prescribing, waste and fraud in its popular drug program.

How We Analyzed Medicare Part B Data

Using recently released Medicare data, we examined how doctors and other health professionals billed for office visits, one of the most common services patients receive. We found some doctors who billed for the most costly, most complex visits almost exclusively and charged top rates far more than their peers.

Treatment Tracker

Medicare recently released, for the first time, details on 2012 payments to individual doctors and other health professionals serving the 46 million seniors and disabled in its Part B program. Part B covers services as varied as office visits, ambulance mileage, lab tests, and the doctor’s fee for open-heart surgery. Use this tool to find and compare providers.

Top Billing: Meet the Docs who Charge Medicare Top Dollar for Office Visits

Medicare paid for more than 200 million office visits for established patients in 2012. Overall, health professionals classified only 4 percent as complex enough to command the most expensive rates. But 1,800 providers billed at the top level at least 90 percent of the time, a ProPublica analysis found. Experts question whether the charges are legitimate.

Even After Doctors Are Sanctioned or Arrested, Medicare Keeps Paying

A ProPublica analysis of recently released data shows that dozens of physicians who received payments from Medicare in 2012 had been kicked out of Medicaid, charged with fraud, or settled claims of overbilling Medicare itself.

Medicaid Programs Drowning in Backlog

With open enrollment over for private health insurance claims, states are struggling to process hundreds of thousands of Medicaid applications.

Beyond Ratings: More Tools Coming to Pick Your Doctor

For years, patients have had few ways to compare doctors beyond their reputations. With a huge Medicare data release this week, that may soon change.

Leaders of Teaching Hospitals Have Close Ties to Drug Companies, Study Shows

Nearly every large drug maker based in the United States had at least one academic medical center official on its board, raising questions about their independence.

Judging Obamacare: How Do We Know If It’s a Success or Failure?

Sign-ups are supposed to formally end today, and attention is shifting from marketing to measuring whether the law is meetings its goals.

Reporting Recipe: Dollars for Docs

With more data on relationships between doctors and drug companies soon to be released, here are some ways journalists can use this information.

Double Dip: Doctors Paid to Advise, Promote Drug Companies That Fund Their Research

Research has been seen as less objectionable than other forms of interactions with drug companies, but 10 percent of researchers have multiple ties among the nine companies ProPublica analyzed. That raises questions about doctors’ impartiality.

Smoking Mad: Tobacco Users Caught Up in Insurer’s Obamacare 'Glitch'

After signing up for coverage and disclosing they were smokers, about 100 New Hampshire consumers, including Terry Wetherby, find their new Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield policies canceled because they were charged incorrect “non-smoker” rates.

During Final Obamacare Push, Conservative Author Sees Little to Celebrate

Fellow at American Enterprise Institute faults steps by the Obama administration to delay parts of the Affordable Care Act, saying they amount to dismantling the program in ways that will make it harder to sustain.

Ad Endorsing da Vinci Robot Violated U of Illinois Policies, Review Finds

When surgical team members endorsed the robot in an ad, controversy ensued. An internal review finds no ill intent, but says policies were violated, calls for clearer rules.

The Perils of Problematic Prescribing: A Double Dose of Warnings

Two new reports from the CDC show the dangers of overprescribing narcotics and antibiotics. Is there a way for doctors and consumers to make better decisions?

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