List date(s) this work was published or aired.
26-Jul-12
Provide a brief synopsis of the story or stories, including any significant findings.
Kristian Foden-Vencil covers health care for Oregon Public Broadcasting. He looks at state and local health care stories, with a focus on policy and health care costs. Foden-Vencil has a knack for humanizing complex stories. He received training as part of a partnership with OPB, National Public Radio and Kaiser Health News. NPR has picked up many of his stories for national air. In this story he looks at a new long-term care appeals process set up by the state to determine when claims are wrongfully denied.
Explain types of documents, data or Internet resources used. Were FOI or public records act requests required? How did this affect the work?
Oregon Department of Consumer and Business services; National Association of Insurance Commissioners; American Association for Long-Term Care Insurance.
Explain types of human sources used.
Interviews with: an Oregon resident insured by long-term care, who wound up fling a complaint to get services paid; Oregon Insurance Division; Oregon call center that helps negotiate with insurance companies.
Results:
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Follow-up (if any). Have you run a correction or clarification on the report or has anyone come forward to challenge its accuracy? If so, please explain.
NPR asked Kristian to do a follow-up to this story that aired Oct. 17th, 2012.
Advice to other journalists planning a similar story or project.
The way to take a subject like ‘long-term care insurance’ and make it interesting is to illustrate how it affects an individual. In this case, I found a man who’d paid for his insurance for years and then had real trouble collecting payments when he needed it. That’s a subject that everyone can relate to.