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.
Need to Get in Touch?
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.
How the New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza Became a Mistaken Poster Boy for Obamacare
“It was the Twitter equivalent of blurbing a book using the one positive line from a review that actually trashed the book,” the Washington correspondent says.
A Tale of Two Obamacares: Which Is Right?
Critics of the Affordable Care Act rollout say its technology problems are overwhelming. Defenders point to the states, where the health insurance marketplaces seem to be working.
Is Healthcare.gov Turning the Corner? Not So Fast
Beyond problems consumers have had logging in to the new federal insurance marketplace website, insurers report major problems with the back-end system for actually enrolling people.
Huge Differences by Region in Prescribing to Elderly, Study Finds
Researchers find that a higher proportion of seniors are prescribed antidepressants, dementia drugs and other medications in some parts of the country than others.
Here’s Why Healthcare.gov Broke Down
Federal officials have pointed to overwhelming demand to explain the site's problems. But web developers, other experts and journalists have uncovered more fundamental issues with the design and functioning of the site.
Health Care Sign-Ups: This Is What Transparency Looks Like
How many people have enrolled in health plans using the new federal exchange? Er, nobody seems to have a clue.
How the Feds Could Fix Their Glitchy Health Care Exchange
It’s simple: Make the enrollment software work like Medicare Part D.
Why You Should Care About the Drugs Your Doctor Prescribes
Patients currently have to rely on trust that their doctors prescribe them the right drugs. Our new tool, Prescriber Checkup, for the first time allows patients to see how health care providers stack up with peers.
A Rap Sheet For Medicare’s Prescription Drug Program
An update on the new events since we published our Prescriber Checkup investigation.
Senator Asks States If They Alert Medicare to Problem Physicians
Citing a ProPublica investigation, Iowa Republican Charles Grassley said that if Medicaid and Medicare don’t share information on bad doctors, patients could be at risk.