William Heisel
Contributing Editor
Contributing Editor
I have reported on health for most of my career. My work as an investigative reporter at the Los Angeles Times and the Orange County Register exposed problems with the fertility industry, the trade in human body parts and the use of illegal drugs in sports. I helped create a first-of-its-kind report card judging hospitals on a wide array of measures for a story that was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. I was one of the lead reporters on a series of stories about lead in candy, a series that also was a finalist for the Pulitzer.For the Center for Health Journalism (previously known as Reporting on Health), I have written about investigative health reporting and occasionally broke news on my column, Antidote. I also was the project editor on the Just One Breath collaborative reporting series. These days, for the University of Washington, I now work as the Executive Director for Insitutue for Health Metrics and Evaluation's Client Services, a social enterprise. You can follow me on Twitter @wheisel.
<p>Dan Wood, the new PIO at California's Medical Board, isn't fazed by reporters' questions. After all, he used to ask the same ones.</p>
<p>What do medical board information officers <em>do</em>, anyway? Antidote blogger William Heisel interviews a former journalist who's the new point man for the California Medical Board.</p>
<p>Is a bad cop better than no cop at all? The elimination this month of the California Board of Registered Nurses raises the question.</p>
<p>It’s not often that Antidote will ask you to run out and buy a copy of <em><a href="http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=1478-3223">Liver International</a></em>. But please do. A moving argument for protecting free speech about public health appears in the journal’s current issue.</p>
<p>Prime Healthcare, says that it has to bill Medicare for kwashiorkor when doctors there find someone with a protein deficiency. <em>Antidote </em>talked to one of the leading experts on kwashiorkor, who offered some surprising insights.</p>
<p>It’s crazy enough that some states make certain records public while other states ban them from public view. Even crazier: in some states, every county has a different set of rules. Here's how one journalist coped.</p>
<p>Death certificates can be among the paving stones leading to a dangerous health practitioner. Here's a case in point.</p>
<p>Was Prime Healthcare gaming the Medicare billing system with obscure diagnoses? Or was it just playing by the rules? Here are three questions to ponder.</p>
<p> The specter of Jethro Tull looms over stories about Prime Healthcare's suspect Medicare billing practices.</p>
<p>Did 82-year-old Harry Taylor die from heart disease or from a preventable accident in his nursing home? His death certificate provides some tantalizing clues.</p>