Strib finds state payments for aides working more than 24 hours a day
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- Glenn Howatt
Glenn Howatt and Pam Louwagie of the Star Tribune in Minneapolis decided to check up on the state of Minnesota’s claims that it had corrected problems with overpayments to personal-care assistants in the Medicaid program. A 2009 legislative audit had found errors. And so did they — including one payment to an aide for 254 hours of work in a single day. In addition:
“In at least 21 similar cases since last summer, the state Department of Human Services paid agencies where care attendants supposedly worked more than 24 hours a day, a Star Tribune investigation has found. In hundreds of other cases over the past year, records show, the department also failed to enforce new limits on the number of hours that caregivers are allowed to work. Those caps were imposed to control costs and keep clients safe from overworked caregivers.”
Today’s Tip: Ask questions before requesting data, Glenn says.
Glenn, who is the paper’s computer-assisted reporting editor, says that when he first queried the payment data from the state, “I was getting funny results so I went back,” he says. “I made assumptions based on data from eight years ago.”
Glenn says if you’ve requested the same data previously, be sure to ask whether the criteria have changed so you can seek the correct information with your Freedom of Information Act request. One way to get those specifics is to request the form — electronic or paper — that the agency uses to collect the data.
Here are some more tips on framing your data requests from MaryJo Webster of the St. Paul Pioneer Press and Brant Houston of the University of Illinois, who presented at IRE’s 2010 Computer-Assisted Reporting Conference on approaching a story with a ”data state of mind.”
And there’s more help on requesting public documents in this video and 33-page handout from University of Arizona journalism professor David Cuillier, who is on a 45-day SPJ lecture tour, promoting access to public records. The handout includes sample request letters for documents.
