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.
States Fail to Report Disciplined Caregivers to Federal Database
Hundreds of state agencies have failed to tell the federal government about health professionals they disciplined, ProPublica has learned, meaning frontline workers who have a record of on-the-job misconduct, incompetence or criminal acts aren't flagged to potential employers.
Troubled Nurses Skip from State to State Under Compact
A 24-state compact has provided cover for nurses suspected of negligence or misconduct, leaving them free to work across nearly half the country and potentially put patients in jeopardy.
Texas Mortgage Firm Survives and Thrives Despite Repeat Sanctions
Despite repeated regulatory sanctions across more than a dozen states, Allied Home Mortgage Capital Corp. continues to be a major FHA lender. Borrowers in Louisiana, West Virginia allege that Allied brokers misled them and diverted funds.
Head of Allied Home Mortgage Has Had a Bumpy Journey
Jim Hodge started what became one of the biggest mortgage operators the same year his previous savings and loan was seized and sold by the Resolution Trust Corporation.
California Eyes Discipline for 2,000 Nurses Sanctioned by Other States
After ProPublica and the Los Angeles Times found hundreds of California nurses had been sanctioned elsewhere for neglect, drug use and criminal conduct, the state’s nursing board ran checks that uncovered thousands of similar cases.
Union Pressure Exacts a Toll on California Bill to Overhaul Health Care Oversight
A bill to overhaul the disciplinary process for California’s nearly 1 million health professionals has run into strong opposition from labor unions. A Senate committee has postponed a vote on the legislation, and the bill's author has agreed to drop some provisions.
Unions Take Fire at Bill to Revamp California Health Care Oversight
Labor unions representing California nurses are attacking key parts of a bill that would overhaul the state’s system for investigating and disciplining health workers accused of misconduct.
Feds Reassign Heads of Troubled Caregivers Database
ProPublica recently reported that a national database on dangerous health professionals was likely missing thousands of disciplinary cases. Now the management team overseeing the database has been removed.