Throughout our two-year rolling investigation into Parkland Memorial Hospital, plenty of people were more than willing to tell us that the legendary Dallas County hospital was providing top-notch care.

But what proved difficult was actually verifying the accuracy of such claims. Hospital officials repeatedly balked at releasing data that would allow the comparison of Parkland against peers in key areas.

Our investigation centered primarily on patient safety and issues of resident supervision by doctors from Parkland’s academic partner, the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. We used as case studies the stories of people like Jessie Mae Ned, a ...

When 19-year-old Taylor Kennedy woke up to find his friend dead, he called the police.

Just the day before, he had gone with Shannon Gaddis, 17, to buy heroin in St. Louis, police said.

Though officials determined that Taylor was sleeping when Shannon snorted heroin, Taylor was charged with drug-induced homicide for buying the heroin that led to her death.

If convicted, the Troy, Ill., teen faces up to 30 years in state prison.

The Illinois state and federal prosecutors in the Metro-East area, adjacent to St. Louis, announced they would investigate overdoses more thoroughly.

And they would go after ...

Every day, thousands of Muskegon County residents pour into their favorite restaurants to dine with friends and family. Yet until now, little was known about whether those restaurants followed practices aimed at preventing people from getting sick.

While looking through more than 22,000 electronic health-inspection records spanning four years, I found numerous instances where restaurants repeatedly violated rules that help prevent foodborne illness. Schools, hospitals and food stands were cited for breaking the rules, too.

Raw chicken and crabmeat sitting out at room temperature. Food kept past its expiration date. Cockroaches, mice and fruit flies living in kitchens. Employees ...

As part of an effort by three journalism organizations to maintain public access to an important database of physician discipline records, that data is now being made available free of charge through the IRE website.

Investigative Reporters and Editors, the Association of Health Care Journalists and theSociety of Professional Journalists have protested the government’s decision to cut off access to The National Practitioner Data Bank, which has been used by reporters for many years to investigate issues involving lax oversight of physicians. The version of the data that has traditionally been publicly available does not identify doctors, but ...

Utah is considered one of the healthiest states in the country. We enjoy some of the lowest rates of smoking, binge drinking, preventable hospitalizations and cancer deaths.

But the state's relative good health masks the reality that Utah has some of the worst disparities when you look at health outcomes and access to healthcare by where people live, their income and their race and ethnicity.

The Salt Lake Tribune launched the series Healthy for Whom in January to explore why some neighborhoods are ghettos of poor health. The latest installment was about how certain neighborhoods have higher rates of ...