Health

Today (Wednesday) was the first day on the job for Bartlett Regional Hospital’s new CEO Chris Harff.

She joins the city-owned hospital from Thief River Falls, Minnesota, where she was CEO of Sanford Medical Center. Harff says she spent her first day touring Bartlett, getting to know some of the staff, and asking questions.

“What are our opportunities here? How can we exploit them? What are our challenges here? Why are they challenges? How would you fix them? What would you focus on if you were me?” Harff says. “And I’m already starting to hear the same, couple two, three issues.”

She says one immediate priority will be starting an electronic medical record system as required by the national health care reform act. She says a lot of groundwork has been done on the project, but more is needed before the system can go live.

Besides that, she says her first 30 days will focus on collaboration.

“It’s been awhile without a permanent CEO, so part of it’s a learning process,” she says. “What am I like? And I’m trying to learn that about the board members and physicians so we can have optimal communication.”

Harff has a nursing degree and an MBA, both from the University of Minnesota. She also holds a law degree from William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Bartlett’s board of directors, which is appointed by the Juneau Assembly, named her CEO in late June.

The board decided late last year to hire its own CEO after more than two decades of an outside management company running the hospital.

John Vowell had been serving as interim CEO since February.

Alaska is once again near the top of the list in workplace injuries and fatalities in the country.

The state’s construction and fishing industries contribute to the bulk of the incidents.

The State of Alaska Epidemiology office released its report on work-related injuries between 2001 and 2010.

Those ten years encompass 3,150 non-fatal workplace injuries and 384 fatal injuries.

Falls are the most common form on non-fatal injury and most of those belong to the construction industry. Construction workers make up 19 percent of the non-fatal injuries.

However, in Alaska fishing remains the leading cause of workplace fatalities. Commercial fishermen make up 33 percent of the fatal injuries in the ten year period.

The leading cause of death is drowning or submersion. Half of drowning and submersion deaths are due to a vessel sinking, burning or capsizing.

Pilots made up 13 percent of the fatal injuries.

The report found that from 2001-2012, “fatal work-related injuries occurred most frequently among commercial fishermen, fishing vessel captains, and pilots. Non-fatal work-related injuries occurred most often among construction workers, commercial fishermen, drivers, and food processors.”

The report attributes the increased risk of those occupations to hazardous work environments and the distance from trauma facilities.

U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski is holding a forum next week on the impacts of the federal health care law.

Murkowski says good health care should be more accessible for Alaskans but she says this law isn’t the answer for providing that.

Her office cites a report, by an insurance company, that found the law would impose more than $340 million in new taxes on Alaskans. Her office says the full impacts of the law are still being calculated.

A release announcing the event says a doctor, real estate agent and small business owner have been invited to speak about the “economic drawbacks” of the law on their work.

The forum is scheduled for Wednesday in Anchorage.

Alaskans consider Social Security a family protection plan, according to AARP.

More and more of the federal benefits are going to children, surviving spouses and disabled workers under the age of 65. AARP research indicates that 36 percent of Social Security beneficiaries in Alaska fit those categories.

Alaskans last year received more than $1 billion in Social Security benefits. AARP hopes those beneficiaries and other Alaskans will join the national debate on Social Security and Medicare.

The organization just kicked off its nationwide “Earned a Say” campaign. It’s asking the public to weigh in on the two programs that seem to have become political footballs in Washington, especially during an election year.

AARP Alaska Media Director Ann Secrest said “Earned a Say” is appropriately named.

“Americans earned a right to have a say about the future of Medicare and Social Security. They’ve paid into these programs throughout their working lives and we feel very strongly that if decisions are being made about these two important programs behind closed doors, then that has to come out from behind closed doors and Americans have a right to have a say about Medicare and Social Security,” Secrest said

The senior citizens’ interest and advocacy group has published various solutions for Social Security and Medicare at Earned A Say website. AARP sought experts, not politicians, to frame the pros and cons of each option.

“There’s no spin, there’s no partisanship. The experts we engaged put it out there on the website for everyone to evaluate for themselves,” Secrest said. “The reason that we did this is we want people to read about the options and then compare it to the candidates who are running for office. Where do they stand? We want people to understand where the candidates stand before they vote this November.”

Ninety percent of Alaskans over the age of 65 received Social Security in 2011, but the total individual annual benefit averaged only $13,500. For low and middle-income Alaskans, the monthly checks accounted for more than half their earnings.

Alaska seniors also rely on Medicare. Nearly 95 percent of those over the age of 65 were enrolled in Medicare in 2011, according to AARP. In comparison, 2010 data indicates about 20 percent of Alaskans ages 50 to 64 had no medical insurance.

Medicare spent about $500 million on senior citizens’ health care in Alaska last year.

Secrest said AARP will hold an informational session in Juneau next month. The target audience is people who are still working as well as retirees. She said they need to learn about the options Congress is considering for both programs and then tell Congress what they think.

Click for Social Security options.

Click for Medicare options.

Alaska’s health commissioner says his department didn’t intend to restrict the definition of a medically necessary abortion in proposed regulations for abortion payment conditions.

Commissioner Bill Streur was responding to Sen. Hollis French, who said the agency is seeking to reinstate criteria overturned by the Alaska Supreme Court.

The court held the state must fund medically necessary abortions if it funds medically necessary services for others with financial needs.  A legal opinion requested by French said phrasing used in the proposal is narrower than current law, and “reasonably likely” to be found unconstitutional.

While French asked Streur withdraw the proposal, Streur said the department would determine, after reviewing all public comment, whether to make language changes.

Streur said a court would ultimately decide constitutionality if the adopted regulation were challenged.

The Alaska Department of Labor says senior citizens will make up 17 percent of the state’s population by the year 2030. But in 1980, seniors comprised just 3 percent.

While Alaska has seen a shift to an older population since 1990, it’s described as a “younger / older” group than the Lower 48 states, according to state Demographer Eddie Hunsinger.

“A much larger part are 65 to 69 rather than 70 plus and that does contribute to the higher percent of workers in the 65-plus population in Alaska. The U.S. as a whole’s 65-plus labor force participation is only about 16 percent, but for Alaska it’s about 22 percent and that’s because we have that sort of younger 65-plus population,” he says.

Alaska seniors also have higher incomes than their Lower 48 counterparts. The annual median household income between 2006 and 2010 was more than $66,500 in Alaska and just under $52,000 outside the state.

Hunsinger says people tend to move less as they get older, and migration out of the state remains higher for younger age groups than older. Permanent Fund Dividend data shows that only about 4 percent of those 65 and older leave the state each year, compared to 7 percent of younger people.

As KTOO has reported before, the largest number of senior citizens is in Southeast Alaska, a trend, Hunsinger says, that’s expected to continue.

“A big reason that Southeast has a large population age 65 plus is that it’s had lower rates of in-migration at younger ages,” he says. “So the population has sort of aged and not as many young people have come into the population.”

Health care has already started to expand in Alaska, but not enough to handle the aging baby boomers that start turning 85 in the year 2030. That’s the group to plan for, Hunsinger says.

An economic summary of aging in Alaska is the focus of this month’s Alaska Economic Trends magazine, published by the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development.