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.
Feds Call for More Scrutiny of Nursing Home Errors Involving Blood Thinner
Inspectors are being asked to pay greater attention following analysis showing mistakes resulting in injuries and deaths.
Agent Orange Act Was Supposed to Help Vietnam Veterans — But Many Still Don’t Qualify
The 1991 law presumes veterans were exposed to the defoliant if they have certain diseases and “set foot” in Vietnam, but Navy vets and Air Force vets in Thailand say they were also exposed. Here’s our guide to groups seeking Agent Orange benefits.
Popular Blood Thinner Causing Deaths, Injuries at Nursing Homes
Some facilities fail to properly oversee Coumadin. Too much can cause bleeding; too little, clots. Nursing homes are “a perfect setup for bad things happening,” one expert says.
Transparency Program Obscures Pharma Payments to Nurses, Physician Assistants
New data on drug and device company payments to doctors largely excludes nurse practitioners and physician assistants, though they play an ever-larger role in health care. One advanced-practice nurse pleaded guilty last month to taking drug company kickbacks.
New Dollars for Docs
Pharmaceutical and medical device companies paid billions to doctors from late 2013 through 2014, new data shows. Search for your doctor in our interactive database.
A Pharma Payment A Day Keeps Docs' Finances Okay
New data on payments from drug and device companies to doctors show that many doctors received payments on 100 or more days last year. Some received payments on more days than they didn't.
Fraud Still Plagues Medicare Drug Program, Watchdog Finds
Medicare has increased oversight of its prescription drug program but many holes remain, allowing fraud and abuse to proliferate. Questionable practices were found at 1,400 pharmacies, which collectively billed Medicare $2.3 billion in 2014.
One Nation, Under Sedation: Medicare Paid for Nearly 40 Million Tranquilizer Prescriptions in 2013
Congress wouldn’t allow Medicare to pay for benzodiazepines such as Xanax and Ativan until 2013. Now, the medications are among the most prescribed in its drug program.