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 "referrals" ...
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Crash Course
A popular Florida referral service company had been attracting customers injured in car accidents. The company had been exploiting Florida's "no-fault" auto insurance law to mislead it's customers into giving money to a network of chiropractors and lawyers that pocketed their money.
Tags: fraud; scam; auto insurance; lawyer fraud
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Not What the Doctor Ordered
The Blade's investigation showed how patients are increasingly being harmed when insurers interfere with doctors' orders. Of the 920 doctors who responded to an online national survey about insurers, more than 99 percent reported that insurers had interfered with their hospitalization, referral, prescription or testing decisions. Interviews with about 100 doctors and their patients illustrated how insurers are becoming more aggressive in shaping patient care, eroding the doctor-patient relationship and putting people in danger.
Tags: insurers; prescriptions; health care; patient care; bureaucracy; red tape; referrals; public health;
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Scandal At UMDNJ
"A series of investigative and enterprise stories into how the University of Medicine and Dentistry of new Jersey violated the public's trust- which uncovered widespread fraud and abuse at the nation's largest public health sciences university, ranging from the payment of illegal kickbacks to cardiologists for patient referrals, to inside deals that threatened a bio-research lab deemed crucial to the security of the New York metropolitan area. The stories led to federal and state investigations, dozens of resignations, likely indictments, and a governor's task force now seeking to restructure the university."
Tags: university; dentistry; health science; New York; bio-research; slush fund; money;
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Auto Glass Kickbacks
Target 8 investigators found auto glass companies in Michigan offering gift cards or cash to insurance companies in exchange for referrals. Target 8 uncovered the kickbacks to be valued at 50, 75, and 100 dollars per job. Auto glass companies get this money back from insurance companies by billing for services not provided.
Tags: auto glass companies; referrals; insurance company; kickbacks; windshield; unethical business
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State of Pain
This story provides examples of the confusion new laws and regulations regarding Medicaid have brought to the state of Missouri. Social Workers have become overwhelmed by the process, there are never ending cases, and they are getting too may referrals. Often times the vast number of calls coming in to social workers, force them to close older projects to new clients on several occasions.
Tags: Medicaid; MC + Consumer Advocacy Project; Missouri Department of Social Services; DSS; social worker; Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act; Children's Health Insurance Program; Missouri State Workers Union Local 6355; Medicaid-expansion laws; Reform Organization for Welfare
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Cruel and Unusual: Shoddy Medical Care at Carswell's Prison Hospital Turns Women's Punishment into Torture
The FW Weekly report about "medical treatment of female inmates at the Federal Medical Center Carswell, located just outside Fort Worth. ... (the) investigation found a pattern of medical treatment there that is extremely poor, capricious and life threatening. Procedures or referrals to outside specialists are routinely denied until the women's conditions have worsened dramatically. Wrong diagnoses by Physician Assistants are routine. Deaths have occurred following denials of medical care."
Tags: FOIA Bureau of Prisons prisoners health care facilities discrimination
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No title (id: 13145)
For the one million women with silicone breast implants, the controversy over the devices' safety has caused immeasurable anguish and pain. For a few doctors and lawyers, however, the implants have become a business opportunity measurable in hard profit. This New York Times article looks at how a handful of doctors made millions of dollars on breast implant cases, usually by getting bulk referrals from lawyers and ordering painful, expensive, often unnecessary tests. (June 13, 1995 - Sept. 18, 1995)
Tags: Kolata Meier Dow Corning Consumer saftey Health risks 13 pgs.
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Bones of Contention
Chiropractors make up this country's third largest medical profession (after physicians and dentists) and are licensed to practice without supervision or referral from medical doctors in every state. Health magazine looks at the growth of this profession and compares it to other specialists. (July/August 1993)
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Death Sentence
Milwaukee magazine looks at the cases of woman whose pap smears had been repeatedly misinterpreted by Chem-Bio Corp, an Oak Creek medical lab. "Interviews and court records suggest that what happened to Dolores Geary and Karin Smith wasn't the result of simple mistakes. Instead, say their lawyers and survivors, both women died as a result of repeated and flagrant missteps by the laboratory and the doctors to whom they had entrusted their health and lives."
Tags: Gynecologists Cervical cancer Family Health Plan HMO specialists referrals managed health care
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Fee For Service: Caremark Faces Heat for Paying Doctors Who Sent It Patients
The Wall Street Journal reports that "When Bruce A. Marguilis left the home-health-care business last year, the physician was a millionaire many times over. But not from practicing medicine. The internist was a kind of super-salesman for Caremark International Inc., the U.S. leader in home intravenous therapy.... But now Dr. Margulis is a prime focus of a broad federal investigation into alleged kickbacks by Caremark and other health-care companies to doctors for patient referrals..."