Senior Spotlight By John Toscano
Seniors Get New Transport Aid

Members of the Woodside Senior Assistance Program will be getting more help keeping doctor appointments and doing their shopping thanks to a new van purchased for them with funds secured by Assemblymember Margaret Markey (D- Maspeth).

Markey cut the ribbon last Thursday at the Maspeth Selfhelp Center. Local seniors joined in the ceremony after being driven there in the new vehicle.

Markey stated at the ribbon cutting, "Helping to provide senior citizens safe, affordable and comfortable transportation to their local center is a priority of mine. Guaranteeing access to vital services is important to make sure that senior citizens are able to stay in the community."

The van will provide low-cost transportation for seniors, including service to and from local senior centers in the area. Operated by the Woodside Senior Assistance Program, the van also is an emergency backup vehicle for the Woodside Meals On Wheels program, Markey said.

The lawmaker explained that the vehicle is a state-of-the-art model capable of transporting 11 people plus one wheelchair. It's fully handicap accessible as well.

The service runs Monday through Friday, picking up clients at their homes and transporting them to and from the center at a cost of $3 per round trip. Markey said the van will try to meet seniors' needs by bringing them to grocery stores and doctors' appointments whenever possible.

"I encourage anyone who is in need of transportation to a local senior center to take advantage of this excellent program," Markey said.

MEDICARE PILOT PROGRAM SHOWS SUCCESS: An experimental program sponsored by Medicare involving 266 hospitals, rewards those facilities that show the most success, is improving patient care, according to Medicare officials.

In a New York Times story published last Thursday, Herb Kuhn, acting deputy administrator of Medicare, stated that most of the hospitals were delivering better care.

"We continue to see improvement, quarter by quarter, in this cohort of hospitals," Kuhn was quoted.

With the program now completing its second year, treatment results show the hospitals had nearly 1,300 fewer deaths among heart attack patients. The institutions also generally score higher on quality measures than the rest of the nation's hospitals.

More heart attack patients receive aspirin as they reach the hospital, and more patients get vaccines to prevent pneumonia.

Along with the encouraging results, a lively dialogue is going on among the participating hospitals on how to improve the program.

One criticism is that the experimental program gives rewards only to the top-performing hospitals, according to rankings made by Premier, Inc., a non-profit hospital alliance which runs the program.

Last year, the second year of the program, 115 of the 266 participating hospitals, were judged top performers and shared performance bonuses of $8.7 million.

According to Premier, the top performing hospital, Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey, received $743,673. The only New York hospital among the top performers was Staten Island University Hospital. It received $387,122.

There is a feeling that Medicare needs to find a more sophisticated way to reward hospital performance. Those rewards are now based on whether a hospital offers a certain treatment, rather than whether a hospital's care actually benefits a patient.

AVELLA ASKS GOV FOR VETS HELP: According to City Councilmember Tony Avella (D- Bayside), "Although the New York State Property Tax Law provides partial property tax exemptions to qualified veterans of the United States military, the exemption does not apply to school taxes. As a result, veterans receiving the property tax exemption must then pay back that portion of the property tax that applies to school taxes."

Avella has appealed to Governor Eliot Spitzer to relieve veterans in this situation of the "school tax payback".

Avella said in a letter to Spitzer: "Given the incredible sacrifice which is made by our military personnel serving during a time of war, and which was made during prior military conflicts, it seems an appropriate gesture of gratitude that we extend this veterans' tax exemption to apply to school taxes as well as to the general fund taxes."

To get the ball rolling for this change in the veterans' tax exemption, Avella has introduced a resolution in the City Council asking that the state legislature take appropriate action to amend the New York Real Property Tax Law, Sections 458 and 458-a, to provide this benefit.

Emphasizing the huge personal sacrifices by America's fighting men and women are presently making, Avella wrote: "During the present conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, many active military personnel are currently serving their third or fourth tours of duty within three years. They face prolonged periods away from their families and deal with daily anxiety about their families' ability to cope with their absence on a financial as well as personal level.

"Extension of the veterans' property tax credits to school taxes will not take these soldiers out of harm's way, or alleviate the suffering of those who served in prior conflicts, but it will help to ease their concerns for their families' financial futures. And just maybe this little bit of solace will help them endure the difficulties that they face every day in their efforts to protect us."