1. Provide the title of your story or series and the names of the journalists involved.
"Hospital High Rollers," KUOW Puget Sound Public Radio. John Ryan, reporter. Jim Gates, editor.
2. List date(s) this work was published or aired.
Dec. 20, 2010
3. Provide a brief synopsis of the story or stories, including any significant findings.
This KUOW investigation found 19 people earning more than $1 million a year at charities in the Puget Sound region. The charities are the region's nonprofit hospitals. The hospitals paid the seven — figure sums even as Washington state endured its worst recession in decades. According to the hospitals' filings with the Internal Revenue Service, another 59 employees earned at least $500,000.
4. Explain types of documents, data or Internet resources used. Were FOI or public records act requests required? How did this affect the work?
The story's central finding stems from data I gathered on executive compensation and perks at major hospitals in the nine-county Puget Sound region. I dug most of the information out of the hospitals' "990" filings with the IRS. I also filed public records requests from the region's public hospitals. We posted the full list of incomes and perks of employees earning more than $500,000, as well as a "How KUOW Got This Story" sidebar with the online version of the story.
5. Explain types of human sources used.
I asked hospital representatives to disclose more details of their executive perks than they revealed in their disclosures to the IRS. All but one hospital complied with my requests. I also sought interviews with the CEOs themselves, all of whom declined. With persistence, I got other top officials at the two highest-paying hospitals to give sit-down interviews. I also interviewed compensation consultants, a nurses' union negotiator and a hospital janitor earning $14 an hour with no health insurance.
6. Results (if any).
KUOW's web traffic indicates that "Hospital High Rollers" was, by far, our station's most-read story of 2010. The story (picked up by the Associated Press) also ran in the state's four largest daily newspapers (and 9 out of the top 10 papers). In response to my reporting, the Washington State Department of Revenue says it will investigate whether the hospitals should lose their nonprofit tax breaks because of overpaying their executives. There's up to $75 million in tax revenue at stake.
7. Follow-up (if any). Have you run a correction or clarification on the report or has anyone come forward to challenge its accuracy? If so, please explain.
No.
8. Advice to other journalists planning a similar story or project.
The IRS 990 form can yield some great stories on nonprofits, but it's a lot easier to use if you can get the 990 filing in its original electronic format — usually a pdf file that is searchable and with data that can be copied out of it. For one-stop shopping, I downloaded many hospitals' 990s from www.guidestar.org. Unfortunately, the 990s at Guidestar are unsearchable scanned images. I ended up using a free, online OCR (optical character recognition) converter (www.cvisiontech.com). It converted each scanned pdf to a searchable pdf. I made sure to check any numbers I used against the original documents, since OCR can misread characters, especially in a poorly scanned document. In hindsight, it might have been quicker to request the original digital 990s one by one from each hospital. Nonprofits are required to give their last three years' 990s to anyone who asks.