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.
Now There’s Proof: Docs Who Get Company Cash Tend to Prescribe More Brand-Name Meds
The more money doctors receive from drug and medical device companies, the more brand-name drugs they tend to prescribe, a new ProPublica analysis shows. Even a meal can make a difference.
ProPublica Adds Teaching Hospitals to Dollars for Docs
All told, more than 1,100 teaching hospitals received nearly $780 million from August 2013 to December 2014, not including research.
Updated Dollars for Docs
This release includes updated data, payments to teaching hospitals, and information about brand-name prescribing rates for some doctors.
Another Senator Calls for Action on Social Media Abuse of Nursing Home Residents
The move follows a ProPublica report that identified some three dozen incidents since 2012 in which dehumanizing or degrading photos of residents were posted on social media sites.
Researchers Call for More Study of Agent Orange Effects on Vets and Their Kids
A committee of the Institute of Medicine said even though the Vietnam War ended four decades ago, much is still not known about the way the herbicide Agent Orange has impacted vets and perhaps their children.
Senator Asks Privacy Regulators to Stop Abuse of Nursing Home Residents on Social Media
ProPublica reported in December about three dozen inappropriate posts by employees of nursing homes and assisted living centers. A top Democrat wants details on efforts to combat the trend.
The Evolution of the VA’s Vietnam Ship List
Navy veterans who served in Vietnam often must prove that their ships entered territorial waters in order to receive Agent Orange benefits. It wasn’t always that way. The following history explains how we got to this point.
Ailing Vietnam Vets Hunt Through Ships’ Logs to Prove They Should Get Benefits
Neither the Navy nor the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has a comprehensive list of which ships went where during the Vietnam War. As a result, veterans themselves often have to prove their ships served in areas where Agent Orange was sprayed.
A Blow to Health Care Transparency
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states cannot require many large employers to submit health care claims to a massive database. Here’s why that matters.
Once Again, the VA Turns Down Navy Vets for Agent Orange Benefits
A federal court had ordered the VA to reassess its policy denying Agent Orange benefits to Navy sailors who served in the Vietnam War. The VA’s conclusion: They still don’t qualify.