AHCJ member Christina Jewett, a reporter at California Watch, was honored alongside her colleagues, Lance Williams and Steven K. Doig, with the George Polk Award in Medical Reporting for her work on “Decoding Prime,” a yearlong investigative series that exposed how a California-based hospital chain billed Medicare for rare conditions and in turn banked on huge bonus payments.
To do this, the team analyzed more than 51 million hospital admissions records from 2005 through 2010. It also unveiled stories from doctors, nurses and medical coders who were at odds with the chain’s practices.
