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

Investigative Windfall? Look outside the big markets for hard-hitting health reporting

<p>Reporters everywhere felt their serotonin levels drop when reading Mary Walton’s well-reported and wonderfully written <a href="http://www.ajr.org/Article.asp?id=4904">Investigative Shortfall</a>, published last month in <em>American Journalism Review</em>.</p> <p>The ranks of investigative reporters have thinned in recent years, but Walton documents the clear-cutting of I-teams in, as she puts it, “dead tree media.” This fact alone should bring tears to any journalist’s eyes:</p>

Doctors Behaving Badly: Nebraska medical board gives love tap to doctor

<p>It’s a phrase only a bureaucrat could love: “assurance of compliance.”</p> <p>The federal government uses the term frequently. When an agency is considering giving money to state or local government or to a private organization, it often makes them fill out an assurance of compliance asserting that they are following<a href="http://www.usaid.gov/policy/ads/300/303mac.pdf">civil rights</a> laws, <a href="http://ori.dhhs.gov/documents/PHS-6315.pdf">research guidelines</a>, and other restrictions.</p>

Doctors Behaving Badly: Medical board gives addicted Montana doctor last chances galore

<p>The heart of Helena, the capital city of Montana, is called Last Chance Gulch, named after the chance prospectors took panning for gold in the creek that used to run wild through the area.</p> <p><a href="http://fnweb.mt.gov/IDMWS/custom/BSD/BSD_FN_Home2.asp?FileNumber=136963…. Stanley Robert Schure</a> could certainly relate. He has had about a dozen “last chances” courtesy of the <a href="http://bsd.dli.mt.gov/license/bsd_boards/med_board/phy.asp">Montana Board of Medical Examiners</a>.</p>

Doctors Behaving Badly: Michigan medical board keeps physician's misdeeds under cover

<p><a href="http://www.patriciacornwell.com/">Patricia Cornwell</a>, take note: The Michigan Board of Medicine may have a treasure trove of story ideas for your crime novels.</p> <p>How does this sound for a book opener?</p> <p>A married patient leaves a new pair of expensive boots at a psychiatrist’s office with a note saying, “If you ever decide to ‘kick up your heels,’ I just hope you’ll do it with me.”</p> <p>Cut to the doctor’s office a few months later, heels and everything else tossed onto the floor while the two had sex.</p>

Doctors Behaving Badly: Doctor dinged twice by Missouri med board decries rising insurance costs

<p>Someone who runs a red light and is caught on one of those video cameras might expect their insurance premiums to rise.</p> <p>Likewise, a doctor who has been disciplined by the state medical board or sued repeatedly might expect his malpractice insurance company to take note and adjust accordingly. You take risks. Your insurance company will make you pay more to cover those risks.</p>