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>No one should have to cite a public records law to gain access to records. But not everyone agrees with me.</p>
<p>Learn more about the key role two St. Louis Post-Dispatch journalists played in a new state law giving Missouri's medical board some real power to protect patients.</p>
<p>Health experts still debate whether wearing hospital scrubs outside the hospital can increase patients' infection risk. Could an Ottawa hospital be the perfect site to investigate that question?</p>
<p>Why should journalists or the public have to cite a state or federal law to request public documents produced by a public agency with public money?</p>
<p>This week, a delegation from Ireland is expected to meet with officials in Bahrain to lobby them to drop charges against dozens of doctors and nurses who have been arrestedfor treating victims of the government’s crackdown on protesters.</p>
<p>Where does a doctor who has found himself in trouble go to find work? Weight loss surgery clinics.</p>
<p>Dr. Scott Bickman saw first-hand how the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency handled complaints about a painkiller mill running in clinics in Santa Ana and Anaheim Hills. And he asks a good question: why did it take so long for the DEA to shut the clinics down?</p><p> </p>
<p>A censured doctor gives Antidote an insider’s view of one of the most troubled clinics in California: the Anaheim Hills Surgery Center, a massive painkiller mill and the site of the avoidable death of a plastic surgery patient. </p>
<p>Any investigative reporter will tell you that a case dismissal does not necessarily mean a victory. Here's how that rule of thumb figures into the case of Dan Markingson, who committed suicide after participating in a clinical trial for the psychiatric drug Seroquel.</p>
<p>The Drug Industry Document Archive have has some incredible documents on the antidepressant Paxil that provide windows into a previously closed-off world.</p>