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.

Articles

North Dakota medical board on the guest list for doc's hospital cocktails

<p>Dr. Kristen Peterson liked to get good and drunk, regardless of how many patients she was going to be seeing.</p> <p>And the only people who knew were the members of the North Dakota Board of Medical Examiners. When the board members found out, they didn’t think it was information that should be shared with the public: people who might be treated by Peterson at a hospital or clinic.</p>

Food Safety: How to find the goblins lurking in that airline grub

<p>Health reporters may be entering a season of scary airline food stories.</p> <p>After years of paying too little attention to the quality and safety of food being served in airplanes, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has been forced to take the issue more seriously.</p> <p>Why?<img src="/files/u47/Airline_Food.jpg" alt="Airline Food" title="Credit: Samantha Marx via Flickr" width="240" height="180" style="float: left; margin-left: 15px; margin-right: 15px;" /></p>

New Mexico hides names of dangerous doctors, threats to public safety

<p>When a fire starts in a hotel room, guests can pull an alarm and let everyone know they should head for the stairs.</p> <p>When cars pile up on the freeway, police set up barriers to keep more people from meeting the same fate.</p> <p>When a physician is deemed an “immediate threat and danger to public safety” in New Mexico, the New Mexico Medical Board sends out an all-points bulletin. Wait. No, it doesn’t. It actually keeps that information a secret.</p> <p>How?</p>

Doctors Behaving Badly: Oregon board nixes doc's ill-advised injections, connections

<p>One of the reasons that state medical boards frown on doctors who start relationships with their patients is because of the power differential. The doctor is in a position of authority, like a teacher or a preacher, and is not supposed to abuse that position by using it, even in a subtle way, to coerce a patient into intimacy.</p> <p><a href="https://techmedweb.omb.state.or.us/Clients/ORMB/Public/VerificationDeta…. Gregory Gomez</a> was not subtle about it.</p>

Doctors Behaving Badly: Practice doesn't always make perfect for New York ER doctor

<p>Physicians are not computers.</p> <p>One cannot expect them to retain every piece of medical knowledge that they learn over the years and apply it perfectly in every instance.</p> <p>When a physician’s bad calls and missed diagnoses start to form a pattern, though, hospital administrators and medical boards need to take action.</p> <p>Dr. Jean Francois Hibbert, an emergency room physician in Elmsford, New York, has stitched a jagged and dangerous pattern over the past two decades. After multiple run-ins with the state’s medical board, he continues to practice.</p>

Doctors Behaving Badly: New Jersey board smears good doc with another's crimes

<p>Pity Dr. Benjamin Levine, a rheumatologist licensed in New Jersey, who, by all accounts, has done nothing but a fine job since earning his medical license in 2005.</p> <p>Levine happens to have the same name as a family practice doctor with a long history of molesting patients and defrauding insurance companies. And, because the Medical Board of New Jersey does such a lousy job of providing the public information on the doctors it has disciplined, it gives people the mistaken impression that the Squeaky Clean Dr. Levine is actually the Former Inmate Dr. Levine.</p>