KHN's Marilyn Werber Serafini talks about how the Medicare issue is playing in the race for Pennsylvania's 6th Congressional District between Democrat Dr. Manan Trivedi and GOP incumbent Jim Gerlach.
>>Related: Medicare Battle Heats Up California House Race
Topics: Health IT, Delivery of Care
Once a month, Dr. Ankush Bansal, an internist, travels to his home in Miami to see patients virtually via computer for three different health care companies. Bansal said he doesn't think telemedicine will replace practicing traditional medicine.
> > See related story: Insurers Embrace "Virtual" Doctor Visits
Topics: Delivery of Care, Health Disparities
Providing adequate primary care at Oakhurst Medical Center, a community health center in Georgia, is often hampered by language and cultural barriers that separate immigrants seeking care at the center from the doctors who care for them.
Related Story: Community Health Centers Under Pressure to Improve Care
More and more employers are tying financial reward and penalties to workers completing a set of medical tests. KHN's Julie Appleby says the tests can include blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugar.
>> Main Story: Employers Tie Financial Rewards, Penalties to Health Tests, Lifestyle Choices
Topics: Aging
Robert Ray of Silver Spring is in the business of helping the elderly move. He's president of Caring Transitions in Silver Spring, a company that manages everything from packing boxes to finding a real estate agent. 75-year-old Martha Colwell hired Caring Transitions to help organize her move from Washington, D.C. to an assisted living facility in Florida.
>>Related Story: The Parent Trap
Topics: Medicare, Hospitals
Ralph Rust's decade-long struggle to stay out of the hospital involves some of the factors that cause patients to be readmitted frequently -- poor diet, poor literacy and inability to pay for medications. Rust, a Southeast Washington man who is covered by Medicaid, said that for years he was hospitalized as often as three times a month at Howard University Hospital. When Rust was transferred to Washington Hospital Center in 2008 to get his pacemaker replaced with a defibrillator, however, he had a change of heart about changing his habits to stay out of the hospital.
-- See Related Story: Medicare Penalties For Readmissions Could Be A Tough Hit On Hospitals Serving The Poor
Topics: Delivery of Care, Health Costs, States, Medicaid
By Jessica Marcy
At the age of three, Randol Brock suffered a high fever that caused permanent brain damage. His family provided nearly all of his care growing up and when his mother died in 1999, his sister-in-law Doris Brock took charge for over a decade. Randol, now 52 years old, requires extensive help with daily living activities, especially as his health has declined recently.
Last December, Doris finally decided to move him out of her house and place him in a residential home run by Tri-Generations, a service provider in Somerset, KY. She also started working there part-time to help with his transition. Like other people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, Randol’s care is covered by Medicaid, which helps with services including adult day training, case management and residential care.
Topics: Aging, Medicare, Marketplace, States
Open-enrollment season for Medicare Part D often brings confusion for seniors all over the United States trying to sign up for prescription drug plans. Most counties in the U.S., however, have programs to help seniors wade through the options.
Topics: Medicaid, Medicare, Uninsured
For the first time the Department of Health and Human Services is trying to help eligible legal immigrants sign up for programs like Medicaid. Here's one program.
Topics: Aging, States
Significant cuts to Aiken, S.C.'s Council on Aging have diminished its ability to serve the needs of its senior population. Since 2008, the Meals on Wheels budget has been cut by 20 percent each year and the waiting list has doubled to nearly 650 people.
More On Aiken's Aging Population:
-- Read: S.C. City’s Aging Population Offers A Glimpse Of The Future
-- Watch: 'Foster Grandparent' Program Lets Generations Help Each Other
-- Watch: 'Project Lifesaver' Tracks Wandering Seniors With Dementia
Topics: Aging, Health IT
Aiken’s Public Safety Department uses GPS bracelets and anklets from Project Lifesaver International, a nonprofit organization, to track dementia patients who wander. Last winter, an anklet helped police rescue Bill Wall, 86, who had wandered barefoot into the woods in 30-degree weather.
-- Watch: Strapped: Meals on Wheels In Aiken Struggles To Serve Amid Budget Cuts
Aiken, S.C.'s aging population also presents opportunities. To help older people pass their wisdom along to younger generations, Aiken has adopted the Foster Grandparents program, which pays seniors $2.65 an hour to read with children during the school year and chaperone summer recreation programs.
Diabetes runs in 15-year-old John Perrone’s family, but it was still a shock to his mother when John, an Eagle Scout, was diagnosed four years ago. He no longer needs insulin injections – he keeps his glucose under control with oral medication, combined with healthful eating and a lot of exercise. He has learned enough to want to help other kids adjust to the diagnosis.
See Related Story: Obesity Problems Fuel Rapid Surge Of Type 2 Diabetes Among Children
ElderPlus, a day-care program for adults in Baltimore, is part of the Program for All-Inclusive Care for Elderly (PACE), which provides comprehensive medical and social services to frail, low-income seniors with serious health problems. (Renato Perez/Kaiser Health News)
Related Story: Innovative Day-Care Program Seeks To Keep Frail, Low-Income Seniors In Their Homes
Topics: Politics, Health Reform
As emotions run high over the new health law, older voters’ concerns about Medicare cuts could be a deciding factor in Florida’s 2nd Congressional District. Reporter Marilyn Werber Serafini travelled to north Florida to talk with seniors and discovered some angry voters, including one woman who changed political parties because she doesn’t like the Democrats’ health law.
Related Content:
-- Main Story: Some Hill Races Could Hinge On Seniors' Anger Over Medicare
-- Republican’s Controversial Proposal To Mend Medicare
Topics: Insurance, Medicaid, Uninsured
Many homeless people are uninsured and ineligible for Medicaid. But that will change beginning in 2014, when Medicaid greatly expands under the new health law. Kevin Lindamood, vice president for external affairs at Health Care for the Homeless in Baltimore, is hopeful that additional Medicaid funding will allow the center to provide more care and help expand its efforts to find housing and jobs for clients.
Related Story: New Law Offers Hope For Homeless Health Care
Topics: Delivery of Care
Dr. Dennis M. Dimitri, a family physician, runs an unusual office. Few appointments are accepted in advance - patients call in the morning and are assigned a time slot later that day and they don’t have to spend hours in a waiting room. Dimitri made the change to "open access" appointments four years ago because he wanted a way to accommodate patients without squeezing their schedules – or his own.
Related Article: Tired Of Waiting For the Doctor? Try One That Gives Same-Day Appointments
Topics: Medicaid, States, Uninsured
New Orleans has one of the most aggressive and successful efforts in the nation to reach children who are eligible for government health insurance programs — Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). The Walkers/Talkers program sends workers into the poorest neighborhoods to knock on doors in search of uninsured children and then helps sign them up. Since its inception, the program has enrolled more than 7,000 kids.
Caring for a sick or disabled elderly relative exacts a toll -- physical, emotional, financial -- on any family member, but being a spousal caregiver brings particular challenges. Today's longer life spans, in which once-fatal conditions such as heart disease have become manageable, mean that the "sickness" part of "in sickness and in health" can last for many years. Eighty-eight year old Bob Treanor, of Maryland, took care of his wife Ruth for more than 5 years.
Related Article: Spouses Face Hurdles When Caring For Themselves, Ill Loved Ones
Topics: Delivery of Care, Health Costs
At the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City, students get hands-on lessons about the impact of treatment costs on patients by volunteering Saturdays at the East Harlem Health Outreach Program, a student-run free clinic for uninsured residents of a low-income neighborhood nearby.
Related Articles: Teaching Doctors The Price Of Care | Using High Tech To Lower Health Costs
Topics: Health Costs, Insurance
Cancer patient Jere Carpentier would prefer taking a pill to having intravenous chemotherapy in a doctor’s office. But she – and other people like her – are being denied access to newer oral chemotherapy drugs or are required to shoulder hefty out-of-pocket costs. The problem? The IV treatments are covered under a patient’s medical plan but the pills are paid for by a patient's drug plan, which tends to be far less generous. (Producer: Renato Perez)
Related Article: A Bitter Pill To Swallow
Topics: Medicaid, Delivery of Care
Former physical education teacher Andrew Jones, who suffers from Multiple Sclerosis, spent five years in nursing homes in Georgia and Connecticut. The 56-year-old was able to move out of the nursing home system in 2009 with the help of a federally-funded state program, known as "Money Follows the Person." He gets help to live in his own place, and the state saves money on nursing home costs. (Producer: Renato Perez)
Read Related Story: Despite Federal Help, States Struggle To Move People Out Of Nursing Homes
Topics: Insurance, Health Costs
A Virginia family got permission for out-of-network care for their son's heart defect but still ended up drowning in debt.
Read full story
Family nurse practitioner Beverly May, of the Kentucky Mountain Health Alliance, treats many patients with chronic diseases. She says the typical patient hasn't had any care for years, and that every week, people walk in who have no idea they have serious health problems.
Read Related Article
Related Videos: Gerry Roll | Annie Fox | Cathy Nance
Gerry Roll helped organize Hazard-Perry County Community Ministries, which - despite its name - has no religious mission. She says people don't understand the problems in southeastern Kentucky: "You can get whatever you need as far as traditional medical care goes. Yet we have the highest levels of chronic disease in the nation. So when I hear people talking about access to health care being a problem, I am livid."
Related Videos: Beverly May | Annie Fox | Cathy Nance
Health care has to be looked at in context, according to Annie Fox and Teana Burns of "Harlan Countians for a Healthy Community" in Kentucky. Fox says: "We still have issues in rural America with sanitation, potable water, electricity. Until you deal with those things, you're always going to have health care issues."
Related Videos: Gerry Roll | Beverly May | Cathy Nance
Six years ago, Cathy Nance had to have open heart surgery. Later, she had kidney cancer. Because of poor health and inability to work, she became homeless, until she was helped by Harlan Countians for a Healthy Community, in Kentucky. "I worked all my life. If anyone had told me that later on I would be in the shape I was in, I wouldn't have believed it," she confesses. "So it can happen before you know it."
Related Videos: Gerry Roll | Beverly May | Annie Fox
Topics: Medicare, Health Costs
Seventy-six year old Frank Morrow is not only having his knee replaced at Hillcrest Medical Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He's also helping to test a Medicare payment system. Under the "bundled" approach, Medicare makes a single reimbursement for all the hospital and doctor care for heart and joint procedures, rather than making separate payments to the facility and physicians.
It's a win-win-win proposition: The hospital gets guaranteed customers, Medicare saves 4.4% on procedures and Frank Morrow gets $271 as an incentive for going to a hospital that participates in the program.
Producer: Renato Perez
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