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University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics threw away 355,000 servings of food worth $181,600 last year, according to The Gazette in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The hospital prepared roughly 3 million total servings of food in 2012, not counting patient meals. The Gazette found that the hospital's dining room serving doctors and nurses from operating rooms threw away 32 percent of its food.
Welcome to IRE's roundup of the weekend's many enterprise stories -- the last one of 2012 -- from around the country. We'll highlight the document digging, field work and data analysis that made their way into centerpieces in print, broadcast and online from coast to coast. Did we miss something? Email tips to web@ire.org.
The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
Do teachers’ absences affect student learning?
Seventy-three Western Pennsylvania public school districts paid nearly $25 million for substitute teachers to cover classes when full-time educators were not in the classroom during the last school year, according to records for 17,000 teachers reviewed by the Tribune-Review.
Bloomberg News
For-Profit Nursing Homes Lead in Overcharging While Care Suffers
“Thirty percent of claims sampled from for- profit homes were deemed improper, compared to just 12 percent from non-profits, according to data Bloomberg News obtained from the inspector general’s office of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services via a Freedom of Information Act request.”
The Miami Herald
How Florida limits care for disabled kids
“A private company boasts it has saved Florida tens of millions — by helping ration care for families with severely disabled children. Here’s how the process works.”
The Washington Post
Rising painkiller addiction shows damage from drugmakers’ role in shaping medical opinion
“A closer look at the opioid painkiller binge — retail prescriptions have roughly tripled in the past 20 years — shows that the rising sales and addictions were catalyzed by a massive effort by pharmaceutical companies to shape medical opinion and practice.”
The Los Angeles Times
Dying for Relief: Reckless doctors go unchecked
“Law enforcement officials and medical regulators could mine the data for a different purpose: To draw a bead on rogue doctors. But they don't, and that has allowed corrupt or negligent physicians to prescribe narcotics recklessly for years before authorities learned about their conduct through other means, a Times investigation found.”
The New York Times
Drone War Spurs Militants to Deadly Reprisals
“For several years now, militant enforcers have scoured the tribal belt in search of informers who help the C.I.A. find and kill the spy agency’s jihadist quarry. The militants’ technique — often more witch hunt than investigation — follows a well-established pattern.”
The Salt Lake Tribune
Driven by suicide, gun deaths are increasing in Utah
“Data from the Utah Department of Health show gun deaths from 2007 to 2011 were 23 percent higher than from 2001 to 2005.”
The New York Times
Ruthless Smuggling Rings Put Rhinos in the Cross Hairs
“Driven by a common belief in Asia that ground-up rhino horns can cure cancer and other ills, the trade has also been embraced by criminal syndicates that normally traffic drugs and guns, but have branched into the underground animal parts business because it is seen as “low risk, high profit,” American officials say.”
The Oregonian
Medical marijuana: A few high-volume doctors approve most patients
“The Oregonian's examination of high-volume marijuana doctors -- including interviews with physicians and clinic operators as well as a review of state documents, medical licensing reports, court records and caseload data -- paints a picture of a highly specialized industry.”
"Investigative reporter A.J. Lagoe, with WRIC TV8 in Richmond, Va, uncovers widespread fraud in Virginia’s court-appointed attorney system. Criminal defendants are lying about their assets in order to qualify for a free lawyer and all too often getting away with it thanks to a loophole in Virginia law."
"The Environmental Protection Agency is re-examining more than 460 former lead factory sites across the USA for health hazards left by toxic fallout onto soil in nearby neighborhoods."
"It has also been found that the campus is in violation of Texas law, which requires certificates of compliance to be posted either inside each elevator or outside by the push button or a notice must be in the elevator directing the public to a place inside the same building where the certificate can be viewed."
Welcome to IRE's roundup of the weekend’s many enterprise stories from around the country. We’ll highlight the document digging, field work and data
analysis that made their way into centerpieces in print, broadcast and online from coast to coast.
Did we miss some? Let us know. Send us an email at web@ire.org or tweet to @IRE_NICAR. We’ll add it to the list and spread the word.
Uncounted Casualties
The Austin American-Statesman
Scores of recent Texas war veterans have died of overdoses, suicide and vehicle crashes, a six-month Statesman investigation finds.
Majority of third-strike inmates are addicts, records show
Center for Investigative Reporting
Convicts imprisoned under California’s three strikes law are no more inclined to high-risk "criminal thinking” than other inmates, but are far more likely to be addicted to drugs and alcohol, according to data from the state prisons department.
A Betryal of Trust
The Arizona Republic
In more than 400 instances, victims of sexual assault turned to the Maricopa County Sherriff's Office, trusting detectives with wrenching details in pursuit of protection and justice. In some cases, the Sherriff's Office did little or nothing. Only now is the full impact of that inaction coming to light, as The Republic reveals what victims characterize as a betrayal of trust.
Port Authority: What's a port authority, anyway?
Investigative Newsource
Developers have drooled for years over the Port of San Diego’s Tenth Avenue Marine Terminal. But each new idea — most with a football stadium attached — has been beaten back by those who believe a rare, deep water port should remain — just that.Today, Port Authority, the latest I-Newsource/KPBS investigation, tackles the question: Are we getting the biggest bang for our considerable bucks at that terminal?
Lax controls leave Michigan's ex-cons free to kill
The Detroit Free Press
As the Michigan Department of Corrections searches for ways to manage its nearly $2-billion budget, it is releasing ex-cons into the community who are
committing a growing number of violent crimes, a Free Press investigation found.
Joseph Merlino: The mobster next door
The Miami Herald
A Mafia icon from Philadelphia has settled in Boca Raton, fresh out of prison. Miami Herald reporter Julie K. Brown examines what he might be up to now.
High-stakes tests, low-level security
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The latest installment of the paper’s coverage of school’s reveals that more cheating scandals are most likely inevitable, because states cannot ensure the integrity of their tests.
How clout keeps court cases secret
The Chicago Tribune
Cook County judges routinely have hidden hundreds of cases from public view since 2000, sealing lawsuits involving a famous chef, millionaire businessmen and even other judges
Blue Line protects off-duty cops behind the wheel
Buffalo News
Police also call it ‘professional courtesy’ - forgiving the infractions committed by one of their own. It typically involves speeding, but officers can get a pass for erratic or impaired driving as well. Professional courtesy can extend to the close relatives of police officers, and to the prosecutors, judges and politicians who are part of the system.
Agent Orange’s Lasting Effects
The Corpus Christi Caller-Times
Chemical still damaging lives of those exposed, their families
Home, Foreclosed Home
Salem Statesman Journal
The ripple effect in our community from the housing market collapse affects local residents in traditional and unexpected ways that will linger for years. The Statesman Journal examines those effects in a five-part series.
Elusive Evergreen State Professor Found In Chile
KUOW Puget Sound
A former Evergreen State College professor in Washington State has evaded efforts to collect the $120,000 fine against him. KUOW found the man, Jorge Gilbert, working for Universidad ARCIS in Santiago, Chile.
Daily News reporter Laura A. Bischoff fought a year-long FOIA battle to get hold of Ohio State University President E. Gordon Gee's expense reports, which ultimately revealed that the unviersity spends $7.7 million on Gee's expenses -- almost has much as his $8.6 million salary. The expenses include travel, parties and $64,000 on the president's signature bow ties.
"U.S. Navy emails and other documents, obtained by Aviation Week, suggest that officials muzzled bad test results for the first Littoral Combat Ship (LCS-1) variant, the USS Freedom, at a crucial time in the program’s development, when the service was considering which seaframe to pick for the $30 billion-plus fleet."
OMB Watch reports that "the California legislature, as part of its Budget Act of 2012 (passed in June), suspended the state's open meetings law for the next three years in an effort to cut state expenditures."
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