Luis Fábregas is an award-winning reporter who specializes in medical and healthcare issues as a member of the Tribune-Review’s investigations team.
Luis Fábregas can be reached via e-mail or at 412-320-7998
Pittsburgh-area woman made similar decision long before Jolie
By Luis FábregasRachel Golden believed it would be only a matter of time before doctors found cancer in her breasts. Not only did her two grandmothers have the disease, but Golden carried the so-called BRCA-1 gene mutation that gave her an 87 …
Hospital price info alone won’t help consumers make informed health care decisions
By Luis FábregasVarious media made much to-do this week about the fact that hospitals charge different prices for the same procedures. Go to one hospital for a certain medical procedure and they’ll charge Medicare thousands of dollars more — or less — …
UPMC may want pain relief with Highmark merger’s approval
By Luis FábregasSomewhere on the 62nd floor of the U.S. Steel building, UPMC President and CEO Jeffrey Romoff must be having a conniption. His secret wish that nemesis Highmark Inc. would fail to acquire West Penn Allegheny Health System blew up this …
Veterans deserve better from VA facility
By Luis FábregasSome lessons are hard to learn. When I asked Director and CEO Terry Wolf this week what she learned from the Legionnaires’ outbreak at the VA Pittsburgh Healthcare System she oversees, she simply grinned, looked around the room and took …
Boston bombings can’t crush freedom of running for Pittsburgh Marathon participants
By Luis FábregasIt’s easy to be afraid. When you think about the bloody streets, the amputated legs, and the innocent people killed and maimed at the Boston Marathon this week, the immediate reaction is to retreat and hide, agonize in fear and …
Secrecy in health organizations is a disservice to patients
By Luis FábregasSome health organizations love to keep secrets. They’ve mastered the art of withholding information about incidents that take place on their premises by trumpeting the notion they’re protecting patients’ right to privacy. The mindset that people ought to be left …
Federal spending cuts could hurt America’s cancer research efforts
By Luis FábregasRemember the sequestration that had politicians in a tizzy a few weeks ago? Turns out the federal spending cuts may have the potential to disrupt important medical research that could affect all our families. The National Institutes of Health, the …
Healthy lifestyle can pay off
By Luis FábregasThe shelves in my neighborhood’s CVS drug store were jammed this week with colorful Easter candy — chocolate bunnies, peanut butter eggs, marshmallow Peeps, and even orange jelly beans in carrot-shaped plastic bags. You would never know it from the …
$20M tax bill would be a drop in the bucket for UPMC
By Luis FábregasUPMC had it coming. No one can expect a so-called nonprofit to go unchallenged when its executives and doctors fly in fancy jets to the Mediterranean and eat meals from dinner plates that are prepared by a chef on the …
Tardy multiple sclerosis diagnosis troubling
By Luis FábregasJoy Bargerstock knew something was wrong when she woke up one morning and the fingertips of her left hand were numb. She shook them. They felt rubbery. They had been normal before she went to bed. “What’s going on?” Bargerstock, …
Superbug information too little, too late
By Luis FábregasMy phone rang often this week when the Tribune-Review published stories about a nasty killer germ making the rounds in the nation’s health care facilities. A concerned wife asked whether her unresponsive, hospitalized husband could be infected by the so-called …
