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.
Big Changes in Fine Print of Some 2015 Obamacare Plans
A ProPublica analysis found that many health insurance plans offered in the federal Affordable Care Act marketplace are changing their benefits heading into 2015. Consumers have until Dec. 15 to switch plans before they are automatically re-enrolled.
Dollars for Dudes: Almost No Women Among Medical Industry's Top-Paid Speakers, Consultants
The causes are not clear, but men account for more than 90 percent of the 300 doctors who received the most money from drug and medical device companies, according to new federal data.
$1.1 Billion in Drug, Device Payments to Doctors Not Included in New Federal Database
The new Open Payments database of industry payments to doctors and teaching hospitals is more incomplete than previously known.
Analysis: Government's New Doctor Payments Website Worthy of a Recall
Our health reporter Charles Ornstein takes a test drive using the federal government's new website for drug and device payments. He finds it virtually unusable.
Our First Dive Into the New Open Payments System
The government's data on payments to doctors and hospitals by drug and device makers is incomplete and hard to penetrate – but here's a first look.
What to be Wary of in the Govt's New Site Detailing Industry Money to Docs
The government's new website on drug and device company ties to doctors will be incomplete and may be misleading — for now.
What We've Learned From Four Years of Diving Into Dollars for Docs
Payments from pharmaceutical companies touch hundreds of thousands of doctors. The 17 companies we've tracked spent $1.4 billion in 2013 alone. Here are our top five takeaways from following all that money.
A New Way Insurers are Shifting Costs to the Sick
By charging higher prices for generic drugs that treat certain illness, health insurers may be violating the spirit of the Affordable Care Act, which bans discrimination against those with pre-existing conditions.
One Drug. Two Prices. A Reporter Struggles to Find Out the Cost of His Son’s Prescription
$15 or $30? Health reporter Charles Ornstein is charged two different prices for the same drug. Which one is right? His effort to find out illustrates consumer frustrations with the health care system.
More Data to Be Withheld from Database of Physician Payments
The federal government won’t release data next month on some research payments to doctors. Health officials had acknowledged previously that the database wouldn’t include one-third of payments made by pharmaceutical and medical device companies.