GBO NEWS: ProPublica on Medicare Fraud, PBS Next Av’s Diaz Departs & More
GBO NEWS: GENERATIONS BEAT ONLINE NEWS
E-News of the Journalists Network on Generations
Jan. 16, 2014 — Volume 14, Number 1
Editor’s Note: GBO News starts this 21sth year of the Journalists Network on Generation by bringing you alerts for journalists and authors covering generational issues. Send your news of important stories or books (by you and others), fellowships, awards or pertinent kvetches to GBO News Editor Paul Kleyman. [pkleyman@newamericamedia.org]. From your e-mail, click through this table of contents to the full issue at www.gbonews.org. This format is “scalable” for computer, e-pad or mobile.
IN THIS ISSUE: GBO News Turns 21—The Passion for News Never Gets Old.
1. HEALTH CARE REFORM SCHOOL: Two Sources to Watch — ***ProPublica on Medicare Fraud; ***Susan Jaffe on Knowing Your Medicare Hospital “Status.”
2. GEN BEATLES NEWS: PBS’ “Next Avenue” Founding President Departs; ***”New Hour’s” Long-Term Care and Aging Series; ***Surviving Caregiving Book and Blog by Paula Spencer Scott; ***Bernard Starr Revives “The Longevity Report (For Living Longer and Better)” on YouTube; ***NPR’s Ina Jaffe to Keynote Positive Aging Conference
3. THE STORY BOARD: Seven headlines on the generations beat from the global impact of HIV Over 50 Population Growing to depression Care via Skype to preserving Navajo heritage through weaving.
4. EYE ON THE PRIZE: Fellowship Deadline for Health Journalism 2014 Conference; ***20th Annual NIHCM Foundation Health Care Print Journalism Award
1. HEALTH CARE REFORM SCHOOL
Two Sources to Watch: ProPublica and Susan Jaffe
Here are two reports from reporters on healthcare for Generation Beatles to track (whether you’re a “health care journalists” or not). Charlie Ornstein and company at ProPublica have recently gotten on Medicare’s case and with results. But beyond the Medicare fraud series mentioned here, the ProPublica investigative health care team is always worth looking to for something new and worthwhile.
Same can be said of investigative health care freelancer, Susan Jaffe. In her years at the Cleveland Plain Dealer, she was on page one nearly as often as the crime reporter with stories on health and aging (especially a decade ago when Medicare’s drug program stumbled out of the Bush 43 White House). Since moving to DC several years ago, she’s become a regular at such sites as Kaiser Health News, The Lancet and, as with the post discussed below, the New York Times’ “New Old Age” blog. If you need to get into the weeds on a health policy issue, Jaffe can help as your GPS.
***Know Your Medicare “Status”: “Fighting ‘Observation’ Status,” Susan Jaffe’s Jan. 10 post on the New York Times’ “New Old Age” blog, which also ran in Tuesday’s “Science Times” print edition, delves into one of those seemingly arcane regulatory issues that affects millions of seniors. Her lead: “Every year, thousands of Medicare patients who spend time in the hospital for observation but are not officially admitted find they are not eligible for nursing home coverage after discharge.” And these seniors can get slapped with big bills.
You see, a Medicare beneficiary “must spend three consecutive midnights in the hospital — not counting the day of discharge — as an admitted patient in order to qualify for subsequent nursing-home coverage. If a patient is under observation but not admitted, she will also lose coverage for any medications the hospital provides for pre-existing health problems.”
Jaffe writes, “The over-classification of observation status is an increasingly pervasive problem: the number of seniors entering the hospital for observation increased 69 percent over five years, to 1.6 million in 2011.
She explains that Medicare has a rule requiring hospitals to inform patients they are hospitalized only for observation—typically for such ailments as chest pain, digestive disorders, fainting or irregular heartbeat—and hold them for not more than 48 hours, enough time for a physician to decided whether the person is ill enough to admit them.
Medicare doesn’t require hospitals to tell patients if they are merely being observed, which is supposed to last no more than 48 hours to help the doctor decide if someone is sick enough to be admitted. So, Jaffe, explains, “Although the rule applies now, Medicare officials won’t enforce it until April 1, having already pushed the deadline back. The American Medical Association and the American Hospital Association have called the pumpkin rule “impossible” to comply with and have urged that enforcement be delayed again until October.”
She quotes Ann Sheehy, MD, division head of hospital medicine at the University of Wisconsin Hospital in Madison, Wisc., stating, “It doesn’t make any sense.” Sheehy, who published her study of the situation in JAMA Internal Medicine, [http://bit.ly/1cbLYhf] observed “Some patients will be admitted because they came in at the right time of day, not because they have more complicated medical problems.”
Jaffe also said that the Center for Medicare Advocacy offers a free self-help packet for observation patients.
***ProPublica Scores With Medicare Fraud Series: “Medicare plans to arm itself with broad new powers to better control — and potentially ban — doctors engaged in fraudulent or harmful prescribing, following a series of articles by ProPublica detailing lax oversight in its drug program,” states an e-mail from the investigative online news site’s Charlie Ornstein. A Jan. 6, posting by Ornstein and Tracy Weber, is headed, “In A Major Shift, Medicare Wants Power to Ban Harmful Prescribers.”
The ProPublica team explained that under the proposed rules, for the first time the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) “would have the authority to kick out physicians and other providers who engage in abusive prescribing. It could also take such action if providers’ licenses have been suspended or revoked by state regulators or if they were restricted from prescribing painkillers and other controlled substances.” The rules would to take effect on Jan. 1, 2015, but, as usual, are subject to public comment until March 7 of this year, and could revise the proposals based on the feedback. It will be an important story to watch.
Two of the announced rule changes “mark a dramatic departure for the agency, which historically has given much higher priority to making medications easily accessible to seniors and the disabled than to weeding out dangerous providers,” say Weber and Ornstein.
Beside being able to give the boot to doctors engaged in abusive prescribing, the agency will tighten a loophole that allows physicians to prescribe to Medicare patients even if they weren’t enrolled in the prescription drug program, (Part D). “Under the new rules, doctors and other providers must formally enroll if they want to write prescriptions to the 36 million people in Part D. This requires them to verify their credentials and disclose professional discipline and criminal history,” ProPublica says.
In its 2013 series, ProPublica showed that Medicare’s oversight failure on Part D has enabled doctors to prescribe huge amounts of inappropriate medications, has wasted billions on needlessly costly drugs and has exposed the program to a pharmaceutical “crime spree.” They note, “Part D cost taxpayers $62 billion in 2012.”
Ornstein and Weber stress, “These problems stem largely from Medicare’s failure to rigorously analyze what drugs, and how many of them, physicians are prescribing to Part D patients.” They used Freedom of Information Act requests to obtain data on the drugs prescribed by every provider in the Part D program for five years —1.2 billion prescriptions in 2011 alone. The ProPublica team analyzed the data to spot doctors prescribing in very different ways than their peers — “for example, by choosing drugs that were risky or costly, or in ways that suggested fraud.”
ProPublica adds that the proposed rules include some Medicare changes health policy experts suggested to them, “but others were not addressed in the proposal.”
2. GEN BEATLES NEWS
***Surviving Caregiving in Print and Online: It’s been a busy start to 2014 for health journalist Paula Spencer Scott. Caring-com will soon introduce her new column/blog, “Surviving Caregiving,” and her 11th book on health and family is newly available, Surviving Alzheimer’s: Practical Tips and Soul-Saving Wisdom for Caregivers. Scott, who has seen four family members develop dementia, is lined up to do guest posts for outlets like MariaShriver.com, Alzheimer’s Reading Room, and a Duke University health site. She’s also doing research on a dementia-caregiver education project with an academic team from Weill-Cornell Medical Center in New York. Reporters wishing a review copy of Surviving Alzheimer’s can drop her an e-mail at paulaspencerscott@gmail.com. Say GBONews sent you.
***PBS’ “Next Avenue” Founding President Departs: A funny thing happened on the way to the Great Recession. About seven years ago a couple of PBS innovators nurtured an insight they realized was unique in American media, which generally disdains older audiences so much it discounts aging eyeballs in setting ad rates (catering to the 18-49 cohorts), not even counting viewers 65 or older in basic ratings.
Judy Diaz, then senior director of brand and audience strategy at PBS, and Jim Pagliarini, general manager of Twin Cities Public Television (TPT), spent months developing their 2007 proposal for network to create its first-ever PBS-wide demographic juggernaut, the “50+ Life-Stage Initiative.” Their plan stated, “Nearly 3 out of 5 people 50+ watch public television and 85% of our retained member base is 50+. By simply maintaining our current share of the 50+ audience, the Initiative could reach an additional 13.4 million 50+ viewers over the next 10 years.”
There were meetings with top PBS brass, keynoted by the heads of PBS and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, to enlist support and enthusiasm from production and marketing executives at the national and local affiliate level, along with invited leaders in the field of aging. The initiative would parlay existing programming with national and local production. It would be targeted to boomers and older viewers on multiple media platforms. Ah, remember the halcyon days of 2007. Then 2008 happened, and anything big, new and experimental—well, you know.
But Pagliarini and Diaz (she also headed up the business side of PBS’s earlier but more modest kids initiative) regrouped and scaled down to a website platform their concept might rise from. Two years ago, they launched the lifestyle site, “Next Avenue,” which has gradually grown stronger combining original and aggregated content with some tie-ins to PBS programs, such as “The NewsHour.”
Next month Diaz will set out on her own next avenue. In an e-mail to GBO News, she noted, “We launched the web service in 2012, fueled it with almost 3,000 pieces of quality content, were nominated within eight months for a top online editorial award (alongside Time, Sports Illustrated and Elle) and have reached millions of people. We are now extending into other media – working with PBS on our first three e-books and developing a special focus on Encore careers with the ever-engaging Marc Freedman,” creator of Enclore.org and the Purpose Prize.
Diaz added that last fall they “redesigned the editorial operation and moved it from a virtual organization to an established organization at TPT in St. Paul.” On the business side, “Next Avenue” recently hired a new editorial lead, Sue Campbell, formerly of the St. Paul Pioneer Press. “Next Avenue’s” Senior Communications Director Susan Donley will take over the business and revenue side of the operation.
“We are in a good place — moving from a start-up to a more established operation,” wrote Diaz. She added, “This was not an easy decision. It’s like my baby grew up and is going to college! So like any good parent I will stay involved a bit. I will be on board through February to ensure a smooth transition.”
*** PBS NewsHour’s “Taking Care” Series on Long-Term Care: GBO News can’t say whether Diaz and Pagliarini influenced the “NewsHour” on this subject, although the program’s executive producer bought into the idea early on. With a little help from The SCAN Foundation, the show has produced excellent ongoing coverage of issues in around aging and long-term care, including feature segments and articles.
Most recently (Jan. 3), the “NewsHour” aired “Increasing demand moves long-term care centers to cater to Latino elders.
It’s the fourth episode in a series that began last May 30, with “Coping With Alzheimer’s: A Mother & Daughter Portrait Of Long-Term Care”; continued Aug. 9; with “There’s No Place Like Home: Seniors Hold on to Urban Independence; and went on to Sept. 5, with Age Friendly New York City Helps Seniors Stay Active .
The “NewsHour” website also started 2014 by posting feature articles, including (Jan. 3, 2014) 7 Tips for Successful Aging, and As Hispanic population explodes in U.S., so too will their need for long-term care.
For a complete list with links to videos (with transcripts) and article, go to http://bit.ly/1duuRgV.
***Bernard Starr Revives “The Longevity Report (For Living Longer and Better)” on YouTube: Gero-psychologist and richly baritoned broadcaster Bernard Starr, PhD, is reviving the segments he started in the 1990s. Back then he wrote a column on aging for Scripps Howard News Service and did radio segments for WEVD-AM radio in New York City, until ESPN bought the station. That ended the “Longevity Report’s” run at a respectable seven seasons and several awards. In the intervening years he’s also posted prolifically on Huffington Post and via other online outlets on many aspects of aging.
Starr says he ended ‘Longevity Report” because he was discouraged that few in the political arenas were ready or willing to listen voices in and around media trying to sound alarms about “the crises for society posed by the longevity revolution.” He also notes that in the ’90s, “the baby boomers hadn’t yet crossed the senior line. . . . Since we are a crisis-oriented society, politicians don’t act appropriately until we are on our knees.”
Now, he stressed, things like the retirement crisis are upon us, as politicians are still applying band-aids to festering wounds. “That’s why the ‘Longevity Report’ is back.” Starr promises, “The Longevity revolution will radically impact every aspect of life–social, economic, political, and more–and we, as a society, are unprepared and in denial.”
Like Rip Van Winkle, “The Longevity Report” now awakens in a new realm called YouTube, one that didn’t exist when it first slumbered. Tune in at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdB72MpRBtY.
***NPR’s Ina Jaffe to Keynote Positive Aging Conference: National Public Radio’s (NPR) correspondent on aging, Ina Jaffe will be the dinner keynoter at the Seventh Annual International Conference on Positive Aging at the Hyatt Regency in Sarasota, Feb. 11.
Jaffe will be stepping in for former All Things Considered co-host Susan Stamberg, “who is currently unable to travel,” according to a conference release. Jaffe, who was the first editor of NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday with Scott Simon has reported on national issues ever since and covered aging since 2012. For more information or to apply for press credentials contact Debra Caruso Marrone, (212) 971-9708; debra@djccommunications.com.
3. THE STORY BOARD
Got news? Let GBO News know what you’re putting out these days. Send your story links on aging to pkleyman@newamericamedia.org. Here are some recent collaborative fellowship pieces New America Media has done with various other news outlets, often via some of the journalism fellowship programs we’ve announced:
*** “Impact of HIV/AIDS on Over 50 Population Growing,” Bay Area Reporter/New America Media , News Report, Matthew Bajko, Posted: Jan 15, 2014. Link: http://bit.ly/1eJ4zXh. As the global AIDS epidemic continues to age, greater focus is being paid to older adults living with HIV.
*** “’Families and Faith’ Author Predicts More Boomers Will Return to Religions,” Religion News Service/New America Media , Question & Answer, Janice Lloyd, Posted: Jan 12, 2014. Link: http://bit.ly/1ayD1CH. The lead scholar on a six-generation family study says changes in aging boomers—and religious institutions—will return even some non-believers to the pews.
*** “Eldercare Experts Find Skype Can Beat Depression Better Than Meds,” KUT-FM/New America Media, News Feature, Veronica Zaragovia, Posted: Jan 08, 2014. Link: http://bit.ly/1ihyypH. Untreated depression is a big problem for Texas’ growing senior population. Experts find that therapy via Skype can beat meds as a lasting remedy.
*** “Stay or Go? Terminally Ill Undocumented Immigrants Face Dilemma,” La Opinion/New America Media, News Feature, Araceli Martínez Ortega , Posted: Jan 06, 2014. Link: http://bit.ly/1iKnFPV. Returning to Latin America can be a form of palliative care for dying undocumented immigrants whose last wish is to go home. Read also in Spanish.
*** “Elder Artisan Weaves Alamo Navajo Heritage for New Generations,” Navajo Times/New America Media , News Feature, Colleen Keane, Posted: Jan 05, 2014. Link: http://bit.ly/1eCweXY. Navajo’s Isabelle Pino-Thomas, 78, sustains the distinctive Alamo style both through weaving and teaching the heritage art to new generations.
*** “For Caregivers and Hospice Angels, Self-Care Is Not Optional,” Psychology Today/New America Media, News Analysis, Rita Watson, Posted: Jan 02, 2014. Link: http://bit.ly/1a4680s. Caring for people at the end of life can be filled with blessings, meaningful experiences and peace of mind, but also exhaustion that can lead to depletion.
*** “Pain, Pain Go Away: Palliative Care for San Francisco Elders Goes Beyond Meds,” Central City Extra/New America Media, News Feature, John Burks, Posted: Dec 26, 2013. Link: http://bit.ly/19t5Rpy. San Francisco’s Tenderloin low-income neighborhood has long provided palliative care through a wide range of comforting services going beyond medicine.
4. EYE ON THE PRIZE
***Fellowship Deadline for Health Journalism 2014 Conference: Journalists – including those covering non-health areas but overlapping with them — have until Feb, 10 to apply for travel fellowships to attend the Association of Health Care Journalists (AHCJ) annual conference at the Grand Hyatt Denver, March 27-30. There are nine different fellowship categories, such as for rural health reporters, college journalism students or instructors, and for reporters in several states.
Typical of the awards is the fellowship category for ethnic media journalists. Those selected will receive hotel accommodations for up to four nights, as much as $400 for travel, conference registration and a year’s membership in AHCJ.
Among the dozens of sessions on the AHCJ program this year are special sessions on end-of-life issues, as well as “New dimensions of Aging,” and others on Medicare costs and investigating senior health.
***20th Annual NIHCM Foundation Health Care Print Journalism Award: The application deadline is February 19 for the National Institute for Health Care Management (NIHCM) Foundation’s award recognizing “excellence in health care reporting and writing on the financing and delivery of health care and the impact of health care policy,” according to their website. The $10,000 prize will be presented to the winner in each category at a dinner in Washington, DC on June 2, 2014. Categories are: Health Care Article or Series from General Circulation Publications, and Health Care Article or Series from Trade Publications.
Articles must have been first published during calendar year 2013. Entries can be from staff reporters and editors, as well as freelance writers for articles that appeared in a general circulation or trade publications. “Online articles will be accepted if produced and disseminated originally on the web in affiliation with a general circulation or trade publication.”
They have a top-notch selection panel of journalists with such notables as John Iglehart, Founding Editor, Health Affairs; Alan Murray, President, Pew Research Center; and Fred Schulte, Senior Reporter, Center for Public Integrity.
To enter, see their website for the Application Process and Rules\.
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