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 "medical records" ...
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Cracking the Codes
Cracking the Codes documented how thousands of medical professionals have steadily billed Medicare for more complex and costly health care over the past decade – adding $11 billion or more to their fees – despite little evidence elderly patients required more treatment. The series also uncovered a broad range of costly billing errors and abuses that have plagued Medicare for years – from confusion over how to pick proper payment codes to apparent overcharges in medical offices and hospital emergency rooms. The findings strongly suggest these problems, known as “upcoding,” are worsening amid lax federal oversight and the government-sponsored switch from paper to electronic medical records.
Tags: Medicare; health care; billing; medical offices; hospitals; government; medical records
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StarTribune: Discipline Deferred
A six-month investigation by the Star Tribune found that the Minnesota Board of Medical Practice, once considered a national leader in the regulation of licensed physicians, often doesn’t punish doctors whose mistakes harm patients or who demonstrate a pattern of substandard care. After analyzing information compiled by a national databank and reviewing thousands of pages of court and medical board records, the reporters found that the board, which regulates 20,000 physicians in the state, has been reluctant to punish some doctors who have harmed patients, including more than 100 doctors who were disciplined by other states and even doctors who lost privileges to practice at Minnesota hospitals. The investigation also showed that the board lags behind boards in other states in disclosing information to the public, including data on malpractice judgments or settlements. It also doesn’t disclose whether doctors have been disciplined by regulators in other states or lost their privileges to work in hospitals and other facilities for surgical mistakes and other problems.
Tags: Board of Medical Practice; physicians; doctors; punishment; patients
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"Electronic Health Records: Will They Be Safer and Save Money?"
In this yearlong, multimedia project, reporters Schulte and Schwartz investigated the shift of paper medical records to electronic records. The report drew attention to the "challenges officials are facing in computerizing" the records. Some of the challenges include concerns of privacy and patient well-being.
Tags: records; MAUDE; FDA; Center for Devices and Radiological Health; database
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Brain Wars: How the Military is Failing Its Wounded
NPR and ProPublica investigated to see whether the government had kept its promise to improve health care for soldiers with brain injuries. The stories reveal that the military was not diagnosing most of the brain injuries and those that were diagnosed were not being recorded in the soldier's medical records.
Tags: brain injury; military; soldier; traumatic brain injury; diagnose
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Doctor Lost Priviliges -- But Kept Clean Record
What started as an investigation of one doctor's questionable practices, led to a larger expose on St. Louis hospital violations and the state's lack of punishment for the doctors that are reported. The reporters found that most information about Missouri's problem doctors and unsafe hospital condition is swept under the rug.
Tags: hospital; FDA; doctors; hospital inspection; medical license
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Hospital Group
New York's 11 municipal hospitals are ridden with false records created by staff to cover up medical mistakes. In one instance, after gangrene was left untreated on a stroke victim, it became necessary to amputate his leg, yet no report was written. Hundreds of citations and complaints have been filed against the city hospitals, but few disciplinary measures have intervened.
Tags: New York; hospitals; operations; mistakes; botched; reports; false; faked; staff; cover-up;
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Mental Disorder: The Failure of Reform
Until the News and Observer published "Mental Disorder," most North Carolinians had no idea that their state mental health system was a disaster. The five-part series examined each major failure of an 8-year reform effort. Major findings included that the sate had wasted at least $400 million on services that were ineffective or unneeded and various cases of money mismanagement. They also found that at least 82 patients in state mental health hospitals and homes for the developmentally disabled had died of homicide, suicide, accidents or medical errors. In dozens of cases, hospital officials had covered up the true circumstances of the deaths by falsifying records and telling family members the patients had died of natural causes.
Tags: mental health; developmentally disabled citizens; North Carolina; mental health reform; mental health hospitals; patient rights; patient abuse; patient neglect
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Hospital Corruption: "Salaries First, Patients Last"; "Hospital Secrets"
The series exposed Schneider Regional Medical Center's top executives' self-dealing and lavish pay, perks and the tragic result: The public hospital's cancer center was left so cash-strapped it could not pay for medicine and radiation equipment. The Daily News also revealed that more than $2.4 million in charity donations to the hospital's cancer center is missing, and the hospital cannot produce documentation to explain the numerous large withdrawals from bank accounts and entities that were specifically created to receive those donations. The investigation also found that two top hospital executives had criminal records, which were not disclosed when they were hired.
Tags: health care; hospital administration; corruption; embezzlement; chemotherapy and radiation; Virgin Islands
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Careless Detention
Four-part series on the medical treatment of immigrant detainees in the United States. Goldstein and Priest exposed the shoddy, unethical and, at times, fatal treatment of immigrants during their detentions and as they were being deported to their native countries. Their stories led readers deep inside America's network of immigration prisons--a world that had grown exponentially in the years since 9/11, yet remained largely unknown and hidden from view. Their stories documented the deaths of 83 detainees. And in one of the most stunning revelation, Goldstein and Priest disclosed the previously unreported scope of a practice of forcible sedation of immigrants with dangerous psychotropic drugs during deportation to their native countries; they found more than 250 instances in which the drugs were used on people with no history of psychiatric problems. Their stories also revealed that the most prevalent cause of death among the immigrant detainees is suicide, including the hangings of detainees known to be in such fragile mental health that they had been assigned suicide watchers. They profiled the slipshod treatment of an ailing Korean immigrant, a legal U.S. resident for three decades detained in a rail in the Arizona desert, with a history of recurrent cancer. And they documented the flawed medical practices, bureaucratic ineptitude, sloppy record-keeping and staff shortages that cause detainees who are sick to suffer and sometimes to die.
Tags: detained immigrants; September 11th; 9/11; medical treatment of prisoners; immigration prison; HIPAA
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EMS Taxi: Health Care Dysfunction on Wheels
An analysis of the public records database found that Cleveland residents were calling 911 to be picked up by Emergency Medical Service ambulances for minor ailments. This is because dispatchers can't say no. The result is that response times are slow and the transportation is a high cost for the city.
Tags: transportation; emergency medical services; Medicaid; Medicare; Metrohealth Medical Center; Cleveland; ambulance; 911; database; health; medicine;