The IRE Resource Center is a major research library containing more than 23,250 investigative stories — both print and broadcast. These stories are searchable online or by contacting the Resource Center directly (573-882-3364 or rescntr@ire.org) where a researcher can help you pinpoint what you need. Browse or search the tipsheet section of our library below. Stories are not available for download but can be easily ordered by contacting the Resource Center:
Search results for "Medicine" ...
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Do It Yourself Plastic Surgery
Prescription strength chemicals and other procedures should not be done at home without a doctor. A number of websites are selling such products at a discount rate and many people are buying them and facing devastating consequences. These products are unapproved and experts say using these can result in “blindness, paralysis, or death”.
Tags: Botox; syringes; prescriptions; drugs; money; medications; medicine; Federal Drug Administration (FDA); skin
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60 Billion Dollar Fraud
“Medicare Fraud, a crime that steals an estimated $60 billion a year from the American taxpayer”. Medicare stated they were made efforts to crack down on the fraud, but this investigation proved otherwise. This investigation revealed how easy Medicare fraud is and that zero experience can still result in thousands of dollars from Medicare.
Tags: health care; medical; medicine; officials; federal government; Congress; system; insurance; plan; doctors; hospitals; benefits
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Medicare Fraud: The New Cocaine Cowboys
Medicare Fraud has become one of the largest organized crimes in America. The investigation revealed that it costs “US taxpayers $60 billion in fraudulent Medicare benefits filed every year”. As a result of the first story, many groups moved in to initiate new laws, which would regulate Medicare and who gets the money.
Tags: 60 Minutes; Department of Health and Human Services; congressional; health care; medical; medicine; schemes; insurance; clinics; system
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Medical Misadventure: Deaht at the State Hospital
The investigation began with the death of a mental health patient, Josh Garcia. He had checked himself into the hospital and as a result an attorney was appointed to represent him and oversee his treatment. This attorney had strayed away from him and told the court, after his death, that he had agreed to take the medicine. This is false and this medication led to his death. Further, this attorney receives taxpayers’ money for every case through the hospital. As a result, the state is looking into the rights of mental health patients and whether this is a major problem.
Tags: Pueblo State Hospital; involuntary medication; Office of Attorney Regulation; state legislature; legal representation; secrecy
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Failure to Inform
“Doctors at dialysis clinics have failed to inform thousands of patients about kidney transplantation, an oversight that could shorten their lives and cost taxpayers millions of dollars a year”. Many patients start dialysis without hearing the benefits of a kidney transplant. The benefits being about 10 years put on your life and saving the federal Medicare program “thousands of dollars a patient”. This series uncovered money plays a large role when prescribing patients on dialysis rather than getting a transplant.
Tags: medicine; health care; medical; costs; kidney disease; taxpayers; debilitating; insurance; treatments
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"Hidden Mistakes"
In Connecticut, the "adverse-event" law is supposed to ensure that hospitals report medical accidents that cause harm or death to patients to the state Department of Public Health. The law was revised in 2004 and since then the number of reported adverse-event cases has dropped "dramatically," suggesting that the medical mishaps are not being shared with the public and the state.
Tags: Bridgeport Hospital; Connecticut Center for Patient Safety; Connecticut Department of Public Health; Wendy Furniss; malpractice; Hartford Hospital; Terri Schiavo; Institute of Medicine
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Captive Care
“The story is about third-world conditions in the prisoner care facilities operated by the Tarrant County public hospital, John Peter Smith, and the efforts of the hospital’s new CEO and COO to fix the problems”.
Tags: health care; medicine; medical services; patients; poor; equipment
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Dead by Mistake
This series documents the massive number of deaths and injuries caused from preventable medical errors. These errors cause "more deaths than traffic accidents', more specifically they cause nearly "200,000 deaths per year" Behind the numbers are the people who trusted the medical system, including the 30 individual cases spotlighted in this series. Furthermore, once the problems were revealed the medical community and the government failed to take the effective steps necessary to solve the problems.
Tags: Medical; medicine; health care; hospitals; errors; patients; risk; victims; death; mistakes; safety; system
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Dead Wrong: What's Really Killing America
Inaccurate data on what kills people in this country is rampant. There are some cases where cause of death is fraudulently invented, but in most cases autopsies are simple conducted incorrectly to the tune of at least a third of death diagnoses. In many cases, cause of death is never determined and these patterns are exacerbated along disadvantaged socioeconomic lines. Such inaccurate data on deaths is feared to skew research on preventative measures.
Tags: death; autopsies; diagnoses; inaccurate; reporting; inexperience; research; medicine; heart disease; fraud; medical examiners; investigation; conduct; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention;
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"When Politics Drives Medicine"
Reporter Alicia Mundy shows how extensive lobbying of the FDA by the manufacturing company ReGen Biologics Inc. pushed through the approval of a potentially unsafe surgical device. Her investigative reporting series reveals the cracks in the FDA's "approval process."
Tags: FDA; ReGen Biologics; lobbying; Menaflex