HEADINGS, Inc.
(Helping Elderly and Disabled in Need Gain Support)
A non-profit organization
Providing Advocacy and Informational Support Group Services
Newspaper Articles in date order relating to items that affect Medicaid recipients....
NOTE: Some of these are older articles...so don't panic! but have been placed here for reference purposes. We copied a little blurb so you would know what the article was about. Most current is listed first.
West Virginia Newspapers Guide - Submit your Letter to the Editor...
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1-24-03 Dawna Smith Op-Ed article in the WV Charleston Gazette regarding new cuts in services affecting consumers on the Aged Disabled Medicaid Waiver program.
12-17-02 Secretary Nusbaum announces FREEZE on West Virginia Aged Disabled Medicaid Waiver. See related article by Deanna Wrenn, Capitol Reporter for the Daily Mail.
3-20-02 Robert Graham, the executive director of the nonprofit Wyoming County Council on Aging Inc., draws annual pay of at least $107,812 plus a pension plan contribution of $16,172.
3-16-02 The Spencer native and Phyllis Tipton, of Inez, Ky., set out from the United Mine Worker District 17 headquarters on Kanawha Boulevard Friday afternoon. On their first day, they covered the ground from Charleston to Clendenin before Tipton's husband picked them up in a car when it became too dark to walk the rural highway safely, Chapman said.
3-15-02 (article submitted to Editor of WV Gazette) On February 10, 2002, the Aged Disabled Support Group began requesting IRS Form 990 disclosure reports from West Virginia senior centers, homemaker, and case management agencies. We did this to verify Secretary Nusbaum's reasoning for the new Aged Disabled Waiver policy change, which shifts many Case Management responsibilities to the homemaker and/or senior center agency side, because he told us "several homemaker and senior center agencies were having financial difficulty".
3-14-02 MARTINSBURG - When you meet Johnny Morgan for the first time, it is hard to understand and hear what he is saying over the constant inhaling and exhaling sound of the Ventilator on which his life depends. The air goes in and the air goes out exactly 18 times a minute.
3-14-02 Case management agencies had operating losses in the thousands of dollars in February, the first month that a new policy was in effect under the state's Aged and Disabled Medicaid Waiver Program, a spokeswoman said Wednesday
3-14-02 When Linda Chapman starts marching Friday to push for changes in the federal black lung laws, a Web site devoted to aged and disabled issues plans to follow her in cyberspace. Dawna Smith, administrator of the Aged Disabled Support Group of West Virginia, said the group's Web site plans to post pictures and sound files containing interviews with the Spencer native as she makes her trek from Charleston to Washington, D.C.
3-13-02 A major policy change in a state program that provides care to the aged and disabled in their home has resulted in individuals being bombarded by letters: one threatening them with the loss of service and the other saying that won't happen.
3-7-02 Setting out March 15 from the United Mine Workers District 17 headquarters on Kanawha Boulevard, Chapman plans to walk to Washington, D.C., by April 15. Along the way, she hopes to attract enough publicity to make everyone aware of the toll the black lung claim system takes on patients and their families.
2-25-02 Linda Maniak, recipient of aged disabled waiver services, writes letter to editor expressing her displeasure about the policy changes. Excellent letter! Thank you Linda!
1-29-02 New Changes IRK Medicaid Waiver Recipients.... Recipients of the state program designed to keep aged and disabled West Virginians out of nursing homes were not officially notified about changes to the program that are scheduled to take effect Friday. [Ken Ervin, Vicki Shaffer, and Dawna Smith were interviewed and quoted in article]
6-25-01 STATE Delegate Lisa Smith's home health company was overpaid nearly $700,000 by Medicaid because she filled out her claims forms incorrectly....
7-1-98 With several thousand dollars in unpaid taxes and bills, the Mercer County Commission on Aging has asked the governor to give it $358,000 in state funds to help pay the debt and its mortgage on a $1 million senior center. "At the present time, we're looking over our options. It looks like a case of extremely bad management," gubernatorial chief of staff James Teets said Tuesday....... The director of Wyoming County's senior center, Bob Graham, ran a 5-inch newspaper advertisement this week, trying to get the Mercer County group's clients to contact his center for services.
5-19-98 Directors of senior citizen centers are concerned that new licensing criteria for providers of home health-care services will open up the state's personal care program under Medicaid to dozens of providers, a state official confirmed Monday.
8-24-97
Little Oversight for Senior Service Agencies...
FAIRMONT - Back in March, the face of past political candidate
Donna Renner began popping up around town. It was plastered, in color, on
six billboards advertising Marion County Senior Citizens, Inc. Renner, who ran
unsuccessfully for Marion County assessor in 1996 and county clerk in 1992, also
serves as the senior center's executive director. She says the billboards are a
legitimate expenditure of taxpayer funds and should not be construed as
political advertising. ....
5-1-96
Because he once worked
with senior centers, Jon Hunter, a Democratic
candidate for state Senate and the lobbyist for home health agencies, said he
solicited campaign contributions from center directors and their staff.
4-15-93
Some senior
center directors are making between $50,000 and $52,164 a year, but the salaries
of other directors who are among the most active in their association have been
withheld from the House Finance Committee. Information on salaries and the
number of staff employed by the centers to take care of elderly and disabled in
their homes was requested when the committee was looking for ways to cut
spending in health programs. Chairman Robert Kiss, D-Raleigh, said he will send
a follow-up letter to the directors whose salaries are missing from the
information provided to him. Kiss said he cannot force them to provide the
information. But he said he can pass a law to force the directors to comply with
the request if that is what they want.
2-9-93
The directors of some
senior citizens centers are not properly allocating their administrative costs
to all of the programs they provide, David Brown, executive director of the
state Commission on Aging, said Monday. Brown based his observation on a
review the commission staff has done in 18 of the 55 counties. A review has not
yet been made in the remaining counties.
2-7-93
THE STATE'S MEDICAID
PROGRAM has turned into a gravy train for some health-care providers because its
reimbursement fees often far exceed actual costs.
7-14-91
When the West Virginia
Commission on Aging recently took job training-employment programs for seniors
from three area agencies on aging and gave them to three senior centers,
one of the first things the centers did was raise staff salaries.
Increases ranged from $750 to $2,625 and the three center directors'
salaries were raised to $48,000, $41,327 and $38,000, although the
programs were only temporarily assigned to them for three months.
5-2-91 The state has capped the number of hours that senior citizens can receive services in their homes through the community care program to avoid running out of money this fiscal year....
5-2-91
......said some of the
center directors have received a 72 percent pay increase over the last three
years. [Salaries quoted in article]