Why some medical professionals charge more than others

"Medicare has emerged as a potent campaign issue, with both Barack Obama and Mitt Romney vowing to tame its spending growth while protecting seniors. But there’s been little talk about some of the arcane factors that drive up costs, such as billing and coding practices, and what to do about them."

"The Center for Public Integrity's 21-month investigation documents, for the first time, how some medical professionals have billed at sharply higher rates than their peers and collected billions of dollars of questionable fees as a result." 

In the latest in its Prognosis: Profits series, The Charlotte Observer and The News & Observer of Raleigh found  that “large nonprofit hospitals in North Carolina are dramatically inflating prices on chemotherapy drugs at a time when they are cornering more of the market on cancer care.” Hospitals are routinely marking prices on cancer drugs up to 10 times more than their typical cost, the newspaper found.

The Detroit Free Press has found that four decades after an agricultural disaster allowed the chemical polybrominated biphenyl into the food and water of nine out of 10 Michigan residents –as the state scales back monitoring of the sites and the Environmental Protection Agency gears for a multi-million dollar cleanup, many of the health risks have lingered.

An internal study obtained by the Los Angeles Times shows that Los Angeles Fire Department dispatchers waste valuable time getting 911 callers to start CPR on cardiac arrest victims, possibly leading to preventable deaths. In March, the Times reported that a Los Angeles mayoral candidate unwittingly exposed inaccurate reporting of response times by the fire department. Reporters have been tracking the story ever since, and reports have included an analysis of more than a million 911 dispatches that showed the fire department fell short of timeliness standards for alerting response units.

Click here for all stories in the series.

"In 1998, seven chronic pain sufferers had been featured in a promotional video for OxyContin that was put out by the drug company Purdue Pharma. In the video, they talked about how the powerful narcotic had allowed them to get their lives back. Purdue Pharma's aggressive marketing of OxyContin marked the beginning of the industry's push of narcotic painkillers to treat long-term chronic pain - an area where the safety and effectiveness of the drugs remain unproven. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporters John Fauber and Ellen Gabler found the story of the video is an example of how marketing trumped science and helped fuel the rapid increase in opioid use throughout the country."

"In recent years, the number of Bay Area kindergartners who have been immunized against diseases like whooping cough and measles has declined. With the 2011-12 school year beginning, The Bay Citizen collected the latest data covering last year from the California Department of Health, so you can see which schools are most susceptible to an infectious outbreak."

KUOW's John Ryan reports that "in the past decade, a dozen patients of Washington’s Western State Hospital have killed themselves and more than a hundred others have tried."

"Suicide is the second leading cause of death for teenagers and young adults in Washington state. But inside a psychiatric hospital like Western, patients are supposed to be safe, even from themselves. Ryan looks at how patients fall through the safety net."

A Bay Citizen investigation has found that "veterans waiting for decisions on their disability claims wait longer than the Department of Veterans Affairs has acknowledged, especially if they come from larger urban areas. Solutions tried in four locations have not helped so far, as the backlog continues to grow."

When officials from Sensient Flavors explain their work, they sometimes compare it to Willy Wonka's chocolate factory. But working at the food and beverage flavor manufacturer on Indianapolis' Southwestside is no child fantasy. Some workers were exposed to more than 400 times the generally recognized safe level for a chemical associated with a life-threatening lung condition, according to documents obtained by The Indianapolis Star. In its report, the Star details problems at the plant, integrating documents throughout the story.

"A USA TODAY investigation finds that an infection called C. diff is wreaking havoc in the nation's hospitals, nursing homes and other medical facilities, infecting a half million Americans a year and killing about 30,000."

"The death toll is twice government estimates and nearly equal to the 32,000 U.S. deaths each year from auto accidents."