May 2, 2012
For years Desert Valley Hospital in San Bernardino County has performed numerous stent procedures without a full license to do so. State inspectors have cited the hospital repeatedly.
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April 6, 2012
About 1.8 million low-income and often Spanish-speaking Californians live in unincorporated communities that lack sewer systems, clean drinking water and other basic services.
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March 16, 2012
“Valley of Shadows and Dreams” digs into the harsh truths of farm workers’ daily experiences in California’s Central Valley and the legacies of its politics and bureaucracy.
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December 16, 2011
Darlene Courtois had never heard of kwashiorkor, a dangerous form of malnutrition, but records show her hospital billed Medicare for treating the condition anyway.
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November 27, 2011
For three years, a small hospital east of Los Angeles has billed Medicare for the costs of confronting what appears to be a cardiac crisis of unprecedented dimension. Chino Valley Medical Center claimed 35.2 percent of its Medicare patients were suffering from acute heart failure – six times the state average.
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November 3, 2011
In one of California’s most industrial cities – near 2,000 factories churning out hot dogs, pesticides, patio furniture and other products – the Martin family has struggled for years with illness.
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October 25, 2011
In Coachella Valley – one of the poorest, densest areas of the United States – an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 migrant workers pour into already crowded trailer parks, sleeping in fields, alongside irrigation ditches, on swatches of cardboard.
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October 14, 2011
Prime Healthcare Services bills Medicare for a variety of unusual ailments – among them a brain disease and a condition causing eyes to bleed – that can generate lucrative payments to the chain.
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August 5, 2011
Mothers around the state are finding it almost impossible to collect child support from some Native American fathers because tribal governments and businesses are shielding them from court-ordered payments, records and interviews show.
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July 23, 2011
A Southern California hospital chain has transferred an unusually high number of patients from its emergency rooms to its hospital beds, gaining hundreds of millions of dollars by targeting people with Medicare, a California Watch investigation has found.
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May 7, 2011
A California hospital chain under investigation for allegations of overbilling the Medicare system has inaccurately diagnosed patients with a blood infection known as septicemia – a complex and deadly condition that hospitals are paid a premium to treat, a state investigation has found.
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February 19, 2011
Diagnosing patients with certain types of malnutrition and a rare form called kwashiorkor can help earn bonus payments for hospitals billing for Medicare.
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December 26, 2010
The number of women giving birth early – often for no medical reason – has increased dramatically over the past two decades, altering the way we bear children and posing new health risks to both mothers and newborns, experts say.
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November 6, 2010
State authorities and hospital officials have discovered serious structural weaknesses at more than a dozen hospital buildings, but they have taken few steps to notify the public about the facilities or require a detailed inventory of hundreds of other potentially dangerous sites.
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October 11, 2010
A Southern California hospital chain known for its aggressive billing practices is being investigated by state and federal authorities for an unusually high rate of life-threatening infections among its older patients.
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