Charles Ornstein

The federal government has proposed requiring that accreditors release reports on the problems they find during hospital inspections. Right now, the reports are secret.

After spending the past year reporting on loopholes and lax enforcement of the federal patient-privacy law known as HIPAA, ProPublica reporter Charles Ornstein has come to realize that it's not just celebrity patients who are at risk. We all are.

Regulators have logged dozens, even hundreds, of complaints against some health providers for violating federal patient privacy law. Warnings are doled out privately, but sanctions are imposed only rarely. Companies say they take privacy seriously.