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>Health journalists and patient advocates should be on high alert for the changes that are sure to come with the announcement last week that <a href="../../../../../../../../blogs/man-survives-alien-tumor-health-journalism-its-finest">the FDA has approved the Lap-Band device</a> for nearly every person with a few pounds to lose.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.consumersunion.org/">Consumers Union</a> is offering a great opportunity for people focused on health care and health journalism to make their voices heard.</p><p>From now until next Friday, Feb. 25, Consumer Union’s <a href="https://secure.consumersunion.org/site/Advocacy?page=UserActionInactive… Patient Project</a> will be gathering opinions from people about Medicare’s new <a href="http://www.medicare.gov/find-a-doctor/provider-search.aspx">Physician Compare</a> site to submit as part of Medicare’s open comment period on the site.</p>
<p>Allergan, the maker of the Lap-Band surgical device, likes to say that it puts patient safety first.</p> <p>Undoubtedly, it does not want patients to have a bad outcome. More injuries and deaths from Lap-Band surgeries – especially at a time when the company is <a href="http://bit.ly/go4V5s">seeking FDA approval to expand the use</a> of the devices – could derail a very successful sales record.</p> <p>Yet many of the clinics and doctors being promoted as Lap-Band surgeons on the company’s own website have a series of problems that should give patients pause.</p>
<p>So many doctors have been trying to lure people to get Lap-Band surgery, <a href="../../../../../../../../blogs/irresponsible-marketing-lap-bands-may-have-deadly-consequences">with deadly consequences</a>, that the maker of the Lap-Band surgical device, Allergan, has finally been forced to speak up.</p><p>Stuart Pfeifer at the <em>Los Angeles Times </em>recently asked Allergan CEO David E.I. Pyott <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2011/feb/03/business/la-fi-lap-band-2011020… the sleazy 1-800-GET-THIN campaign</a>:</p>
<p><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2798/4222944792_00c84c960a_m.jpg" alt="Lose Weight Billboard" width="240" height="180" style="float: left; margin-left: 5px; margin-right: 15px;" />The consequences can be severe when clinics lure patients by setting up “1-800” numbers and offering free se
<p>When I wrote about the “Dieting Sucks” campaign two years ago, I predicted that similarly unscrupulous plastic surgeons would join the race to the bottom. They did.</p>
<p>When Dow Jones & Co., publisher of <em>The Wall Street Journal</em>, <a href="http://www.law360.com/topnews/articles/222184/dow-jones-seeks-to-shine-… it was suing</a> to gain access to information about individual providers in the Medicare claims database, investigative reporters everywhere started salivating.</p>
<p><em>The Wall Street Journal</em>’s series on Medicare costs, “<a href="http://topics.wsj.com/subject/S/secrets-of-the-system/6281">Secrets of the System</a>,” sets the mind spinning with possibilities for future health investigations. I culled five tips from the <a href="../../../../../../../../blogs/covering-medicare-spending-part-1-tips-wall-street-journals-secrets-system">on Wednesday</a>. Here are five more. Next week, I will offer a few story ideas that could grow out of the Journal’s efforts to crack open the Medicare claims database for everyone.</p>
<p><em>The Wall Street Journal</em>’s <a href="http://www.soros.org/initiatives/fellowship/fellows/schoofs_2008">Mark Schoofs</a> and <a href="http://businessjournalism.org/2010/10/27/sifting-medicare-claims-for-fr… Tamman</a> have been dismantling Medicare’s claims database piece by piece for months in a series of blockbuster stories under the umbrella “<a href="http://topics.wsj.com/subject/S/secrets-of-the-system/6281">Secrets of the System</a>.”</p>
<p>It’s nice to hear an attorney speak plainly.</p> <p>New Jersey Deputy Attorney General Debra Conrad said recently, of a doctor accused of selling painkillers to patients he had never examined, that he “is no different than a street-corner drug dealer. He sold drugs to people for money. The only difference is that he did so under cover of his medical practice."</p> <p>The doctor in question is <a href="http://www.nj.com/hudson/index.ssf/2010/07/jersey_city_doc_pleads.html"…. Magdy Elamir</a>.</p>