Nonprofit News and Comment

HEALTH CARE

“Reviving a trailblazer; CEO tries to make Ms. Foundation relevant to a new generation of women.” By Theresa Agovino. Crain’s New York Business. April 7, 2013. As the head of the Ms. Foundation for Women, Anika Rahman was understandably interested in attending a private meeting where Sheryl Sandberg would be discussing her controversial book, Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead. In a postsession interview, Ms. Rahman echoed the critics who chastised Ms. Sandberg for suggesting that women’s failure to take more responsibility at work is why they haven’t conquered the C-suite. “She lets government and employers off the hook,” said Ms. Rahman, the foundation’s president and chief executive. But, the 47-year-old added, “she is getting 20-year-old women to think about how our culture shapes the workplace. She started a conversation.” It’s a dialogue the Ms. Foundation might have started back in the 1970s when it was co-founded by Gloria Steinem, a mother of the feminist movement. But over the years the foundation’s importance has waned amid a wave of new groups and changing politics. Ms. Rahman is striving to bring the Ms. Foundation back to the forefront by launching a major rebranding campaign and fundraising initiative. To increase its influence, she has pared its focus to three main issues: prevention of child sexual abuse; reproductive rights; and access to safe, affordable child care. In the past year, the foundation has started a social-media campaign, revamped its website, replaced its logo and hired an executive to lead a state-level lobbying effort. At its May fundraising gala celebrating its 40th anniversary, the foundation will give awards to young feminists for the first time as it kicks off a campaign to raise $40 million in five years. “We need to raise our national profile,” said Ms. Rahman, who took the helm of the advocacy group, which also provides funding to smaller organizations, in 2011.

HEALTH CARE

“Longtime Roxbury clinic is placed into receivership.” By Peter Schworm and Adrian Walker. Boston Globe. April 6, 2013. A longtime Roxbury health clinic was cast into receivership Friday after being shut down for unsafe patient care and dysfunctional management, the first time in recent memory the state has taken control of a community health center. Roxbury Comprehensive Community Health Center, a neighborhood mainstay for more than four decades, had come under intense scrutiny from health regulators over the past year amid growing concerns about its finances and daily operations. Two weeks ago, the clinic, familiarly known as RoxComp, surrendered its license and fired its employees.
The receiver will conduct an audit to determine if money was misappropriated and what drove the center to effective collapse, officials said. “There just seemed to be a series of events that put it in a death spiral that it couldn’t pull out of,” said Martha Coakley, the state’s attorney general, in a phone interview. She said that after meeting with the chairman of the center’s board, Keith Crawford, earlier this week, it was clear that the center could no longer operate independently. “Dr. Crawford did not seem to be able to articulate any kind of plan that could revive that institution,” Coakley said. “It became necessary to mitigate the damage, make sure the patients were cared for, and do what’s best for the building and the institution.”

HEALTH CARE

“Anti-Polio Campaign Gets Big Cash Infusion; Bloomberg, Calling His $100 Million Donation a ‘No Brainer,’ Joins Effort Led by Gates to Eradicate Disease by 2018.” By Betsy McKay. Wall Street Journal. February 28, 2013. A health worker gives a polio vaccine to a child in Pakistan in early February, nearly two months after other vaccinators in the country were killed. Their move comes at a particularly difficult moment in the war on polio: Some health workers who vaccinated people in Nigeria and Pakistan, two of the three countries where it remains endemic, have been killed recently. Mr. Bloomberg, the New York City mayor, plans to announce Thursday that he is giving $100 million through the philanthropic arm of his foundation to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative. The 25-year-old public-private partnership has narrowed the number of countries where polio is still endemic, putting eradication in sight. The donation from Bloomberg Philanthropies, to be made over six years, gives a big boost to an effort by fellow billionaire philanthropist Mr. Gates to raise $5.5 billion for a new GPEI “polio eradication and endgame strategic plan” to wipe out the virus by 2018. Polio eradication is a major priority for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which has invested more than $1.5 billion in the cause since 2008. “It’s got to be the toughest time to raise money for this type of thing in recent history,” he said, adding that as far as U.S. government donations go, “with the sequester, I guess polio gets cut 5% like everything else.” The CDC would see a budget cut of about 5% as the automatic spending reductions take effect and has said all programs would be affected. Still, Mr. Gates said he has gotten some “positive responses” from potential donors. “It’s such a worthy cause. I think we’ll be successful,” he said. He said Mr. Bloomberg gave the amount of money he requested.
Related stories:
“Bill Gates and Michael Bloomberg: Our Plan to Eradicate Polio; In 2012, there were fewer than 225 cases world-wide, but stamping out the disease in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigeria will be the hardest part.” Wall Street Journal. February 28, 2013.
“New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg Donating $100 Million To Help Fight Polio.” Huffington Post. March 1, 2013.
“Bill Gates: We cannot stand still on polio, but we can push ahead and end it
Through its judicious use of foreign aid, the UK has helped drive this recent progress.” Independent (UK). March 1, 2013.

HEALTH CARE

“Giving kids a view to a better future.” By Steve Lopez. Los Angeles Times. February 5, 2013. In one year, Vision To Learn, a nonprofit mobile eye lab, has given eye exams to 5,000 students and handed out 4,000 pairs of glasses. ‘A $20 pair of glasses can change your life,’ its founder says. Bosko Magana, a 10-year-old fifth-grader at Dolores Mission School in Boyle Heights, began noticing about a year ago that her world was getting a little fuzzy around the edges. But eyeglasses didn’t fit into the family budget. On Monday morning, a mobile eye lab from Vision To Learn, a one-year-old nonprofit, rolled onto the Dolores Mission campus and students were called up, one at a time, to claim their new, free glasses. Bosko, Joanna and Eugene were among 31 students who got specs, and after a ceremony, some of their classmates lined up outside the van for eye tests. At Catholic and L.A. Unified Schools throughout Los Angeles, kids are seeing better because Austin Beutner, a former investment banker and deputy mayor who lives in Pacific Palisades, was shocked by what he heard from an acquaintance. “An educator who I know came up to me and said about 15% of the kids in public schools can’t see the board,” Beutner said. “I asked around and said, well, this seems like a problem we can solve, so I went out, bought this vehicle, hired some doctors, put together a team.” In less than a year, Vision to Learn has tested 5,000 students and distributed almost 4,000 pairs of prescription glasses. Beutner said his research suggests that 30,000 to 40,000 elementary school students in the city need glasses, and that 60% of so-called problem learners are visually impaired.

HEALTH CARE

“Rescue Plan Is Emerging for Hospital in Manhattan.” By Anemona Hartocollis. New York Times. January 28, 2013. Manhattan’s only remaining hospital south of 14th Street, New York Downtown, has found a white knight willing to take over its debt and return it to good health, hospital officials said Monday. NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, one of New York City’s largest academic medical centers, has proposed to take over New York Downtown in a “certificate of need” filed with the State Health Department. The three-page proposal argues that though New York Downtown is projected to have a significant operating loss in 2013, it is vital to Lower Manhattan, including Wall Street, Chinatown and the Lower East Side, especially since the closing of St. Vincent’s Hospital after it declared bankruptcy in 2010. The rescue proposal, which would need the Health Department’s approval, comes at a precarious time for hospitals in the city. Long Island College Hospital, just across the river in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, has been threatened with closing after a failed merger with SUNY Downstate Medical Center, and several other Brooklyn hospitals are considering mergers to stem losses. New York Downtown has been affiliated with the NewYork-Presbyterian health care system while maintaining separate operations. The proposal said that if New York Downtown were to close, it would leave more than 300,000 residents of Lower Manhattan, including the financial district, Greenwich Village, SoHo, the Lower East Side and Chinatown, without a community hospital. In addition, it said, 750,000 people work and visit in the area every day, a number that is expected to grow with the construction of 1 World Trade Center and related buildings. The proposal argues that New York Downtown is essential partly because of its long history of responding to disasters in the city. One of its predecessors was founded as a direct result of the 1920 terrorist bombing outside the J. P. Morgan Building, and the hospital has responded to the 1975 bombing of Fraunces Tavern, the 1993 and 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center, and, this month, the crash of a commuter ferry from New Jersey

“Steward reshapes Mass. health care business; For-profit hospital chain is growing fast; cutting costs with tough management, innovation.” By Robert Weisman. Boston Globe. February 3, 2013. Like everything else about for-profit Steward — robotic surgery, fixed-rate insurance contracts, managers working with patients to prevent hospital readmissions — the e-ICU is focused on innovation, efficiency, and finding ways to save money. It’s a formula that has been reshaping the way business is done in the state’s health care industry ever since Steward was formed by a New York buyout firm in 2010 to take over the struggling Caritas Christi Health Care chain. But whether the makeover will achieve its most important goals — making medical care less expensive in Massachusetts and making a profit for Steward — remains an open question. What is certain is that Steward has become a force in this critical industry. “There’s a bubbling caldron of change going on in Massachusetts health care, and Steward is the single biggest part of it right now,” said James Roosevelt Jr., chief executive of Tufts Health Plan, which has teamed up with Steward to sell a limited-network insurance product to small companies located near Steward hospitals.

HEALTH CARE

“Health Care and Profits, a Poor Mix.” By Eduardo Porter. New York Times. January 8, 2013. Thirty years ago, Bonnie Svarstad and Chester Bond of the School of Pharmacy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison discovered an interesting pattern in the use of sedatives at nursing homes in the south of the state. Patients entering church-affiliated nonprofit homes were prescribed drugs roughly as often as those entering profit-making “proprietary” institutions. But patients in proprietary homes received, on average, more than four times the dose of patients at nonprofits. Writing about his colleagues’ research in his 1988 book “The Nonprofit Economy,” the economist Burton Weisbrod provided a straightforward explanation: “differences in the pursuit of profit.” Sedatives are cheap, Mr. Weisbrod noted. “Less expensive than, say, giving special attention to more active patients who need to be kept busy.” This behavior was hardly surprising. Hospitals run for profit are also less likely than nonprofit and government-run institutions to offer services like home health care and psychiatric emergency care, which are not as profitable as open-heart surgery. A shareholder might even applaud the creativity with which profit-seeking institutions go about seeking profit. But the consequences of this pursuit might not be so great for other stakeholders in the system — patients, for instance.

HEALTH CARE

“Health-Care Unions Will Join Forces.” By Kris Maher. San Jose Mercury News/Associated Press. January 3, 2013. The nation’s largest nurses union said Thursday it would team up with a union representing other health-care workers, seeking to make the combined entity the dominant labor group in the fast-growing health-care sector. The groups’ decision to join forces intensifies their rivalry with the powerful Service Employees International Union. The California Nurses Association and the National Union of Healthcare Workers said the affiliation was aimed at preventing hospital chains from scaling back benefits for employees and fighting for workplace standards needed to improve patient care. Nurses protest staff cuts during a strike Dec. 24 in San Jose, Calif., part of demonstrations at nine hospitals. But the combined unions are also expected to aggressively campaign against the SEIU in organizing union drives, including one of the biggest of the year at health-care giant Kaiser Permanente, with 43,000 workers at stake. The workers, represented by the SEIU, will vote on whether to remain with that union or join the strengthened NUHW. “Our members are all there for them,” said Deborah Burger, co-president of the nurses union. Under the agreement, the health-care workers union will largely keep its autonomy, but its members will pay dues to the nurses union. The California Nurses Association, which represents 85,000 nurses in the state, also belongs to National Nurses United, an umbrella group with 100,000 additional members in states including Massachusetts, Michigan, Florida and Texas. Both the NUHW and the SEIU represent health-care workers including nurses’ aides, laboratory technicians, office staff and support staff such as food-service workers. The SEIU also includes some nurses—about 85,000 of its two million members.

HEALTH CARE

“Abortion Clinic Presses to Stay Open.” By Cameron McWhirther. Wall Street Journal. December 11, 2012. Mississippi’s only abortion clinic says it won’t be able to meet a requirement of a new state law that tightens regulations for abortion providers, and has asked a federal judge to prevent state officials from revoking its license. The law, passed by the state legislature this spring and in effect since July, requires all abortion clinics to have admitting privileges at a local hospital for all of its doctors. But in a request for an injunction filed in U.S. District Court in Jackson recently, the Jackson Women’s Health Organization said eight major hospitals in the state have rejected its request to grant privileges to two of its three obstetrics and gynecology doctors. The clinic said in the request it has “no hope of being able to comply” with the new law by a Jan. 11 deadline set by the Mississippi Department of Health. “Irreparable harm will flow” if the department enforces the law and revokes its license, leaving Mississippi without abortion services, the clinic said. It asked U.S. District Judge Daniel Jordan III to block the state from enforcing the privileges requirement, pending the outcome of a federal lawsuit in which the clinic is seeking to have the state law declared unconstitutional. “We’ve done everything we can to comply with the law, and we will not be able to do so,” said Diane Derzis, the clinic’s owner. “They have effectively banned abortion in the state of Mississippi.” The new law is supported by the governor and leading Republicans and Democrats in Mississippi, which already has some of the nation’s strictest abortion laws. It is meant to protect abortion patients in case something goes wrong with the procedure, said State Rep. Sam Mims, the law’s author and Republican chairman of the state House’s Public Health and Human Services Committee.

“Texas Cancer Institute Is Under Investigation.” By Nathan Koppel. Wall Street Journal. December 11, 2012. The director of a Texas cancer-fighting agency resigned this week amid scrutiny of the way it has allocated funding, including an investigation by the state’s attorney general into a grant the agency gave to a biotech company. The Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas, an agency created in 2007 with a mission to spend $3 billion in state funds toward cancer research and cures, has quickly become one of the world’s leading benefactors of such projects. But it has faced widespread criticism from some of its own scientific advisers, many of whom resigned this year after complaining to institute management that it is too willing to fund cancer projects that haven’t been thoroughly vetted by scientists. The agency’s executive director, William Gimson, resigned Monday, stating in a letter to the institute’s board he was willing to remain in his post until mid-January. He wrote that he could no longer be effective in his position. Mr. Gimson said in the letter that the agency had made a “few mistakes,” without elaborating, but also emphatically defended its work, writing that its 427 grants “constitute the best cancer prevention, research and company investments in the world today!”

“Blue Shield of California seeks rate hikes up to 20%; In filings with state regulators, Blue Shield is seeking an average rate increase of 12% for more than 300,000 customers. Consumer advocates say the firm should use its reserves to hold down rates.” By Chad Terhune. Los Angeles Times. December 13, 2012. Health insurer Blue Shield of California wants to raise rates as much as 20% for some individual policyholders, prompting calls for the nonprofit to use some of its record-high reserve of $3.9 billion to hold down premiums. In filings with state regulators, Blue Shield is seeking an average rate increase of 12% for more than 300,000 customers, effective in March, with a maximum increase of 20%. Some consumer advocates and healthcare economists say Blue Shield shouldn’t be raising rates that high when it has stockpiled so much cash. The company’s surplus is nearly three times as much as the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Assn. requires its member insurers to hold to cover future claims.

HEALTH CARE

“Leery of a Merger, a Hospital in Brooklyn Plans to Declare Bankruptcy.” By Anemona Hartocollis. New York Times. December 2, 2012. A financially troubled hospital serving a largely African-American and Caribbean niche of central Brooklyn is planning to declare bankruptcy this week, hospital officials said on Sunday, raising concerns that New York State may force it to close or merge with another institution. The hospital, Interfaith Medical Center, serving Bedford-Stuyvesant and Crown Heights, has been in and out of financial trouble for decades, with its survival dependent on infusions of state aid. In difficult economic times, however, the Cuomo administration has not indicated a willingness to continue bailing out failing hospitals. James Introne, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s deputy secretary for health, when asked on Friday about the possibility of an Interfaith bankruptcy filing, said he was not aware of it, but he said, “That’s their decision, not ours.” A year ago, a Brooklyn work group of the governor’s Medicaid Redesign Team, which was created to find savings in the hospital and health industry, recommended that Interfaith merge with two other Brooklyn hospitals, Wyckoff Heights Medical Center and Brooklyn Hospital. It suggested that Brooklyn Hospital, judged to be the most financially stable of the three, should take the lead. Interfaith officials said on Sunday that they had no choice but to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization, given the hospital’s precarious financial situation.