William Heisel

I experienced a crushing failure as an investigative reporter that I hope none of you ever have to experience. But I learned some important lessons along the way, including the need to focus my questions, narrow the scope, and embrace imperfect data.

The digital revolution has been a boon to reporting. But turning paper into digital files is not the same as making them freely available online, and major obstacles persist. The National Practitioner Data Bank offers a particularly egregious example.

What is The Des Moines Register presenting to the world as the big issue of the day in Iowa in the run up to the caucuses? Government mistrust. But this isn’t about Benghazi; this is about far more mundane things, like thwarted record requests and outrageous fees.

As the law stands now, doctors on probation have to tell hospitals and insurance companies about the fact that they are on probation. But they don’t have to tell their patients. Consumer groups argue that should change and momentum is building in support of the idea.

The patient identified only as E.T. in documents had entered the hospital alive, with a slow heart rate. She died a few hours later, after Dr. Madhusudhan T. Gupta had tried to insert a pacemaker into her artery instead of her vein. Years would go by before the Medical Board took meaningful action.

Dr. Gupta was performing a procedure in which a pacemaker is inserted through a patient's blood vessels. But he skipped a key step, and the patient's condition steadily worsened. The case is a reminder that the skills a physician has earlier in their career don’t always remain sharp toward the end.

Last week, columnist William Heisel criticized the new California Healthcare Compare's website for how it rates hospitals on childbirth, noting that the tool focused too heavily on C-sections and breastfeeding. This week, he offers five indicators that would give potential patients a fuller picture.

If you are pregnant and considering where to give birth to your child, what matters most to you? Probably not the quality measures used to calculate the ratings at California Healthcare Compare, a new online tool that allows consumers to compare health care prices and quality.

By now you’ve heard about the launch of the new California Healthcare Compare website, which allows users to compare cost and quality on common procedures throughout the state. Less noted, however, are some of the site’s serious limitations. Bill Heisel breaks them down for us.

A revamped version of the website DocInfo promises to be a useful tool for anyone researching doctors' histories with their respective medical boards. Contributing editor William Heisel takes the overhauled site out for a spin.