By Flickr user ButterflySha

Short as it is, February is jammed with serious, silly and seasonal events that make great pegs for business and economy stories.

I’ve posted about some of them, like Black History Month and next weeks’ Westminster Kennel Club dog show.  But there’s so much more going on in the next 20 days that crafty business journalists can springboard from; it’s a pity some of these events can’t be transferred to the doldrums of July and August.

From the sober to the sublime, here’s a roundup of ideas that haven’t yet made the cut for their own post – time’s flying and you might want to build some features around them:

American Heart Month.  More than 2,000 Americans a day die from heart disease, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention release.   And it’s difficult to think of a a business beat, from technology to health care to workplace to personal finance, that couldn’t find some sort of cardiovascular story to do.  Here’s a neat press release about the latest heart-starting technology to be featured on Airbus aircraft, for example – apparently it delivers electroshocks without human prompting and even can coach untrained bystanders in CPR.  Who wouldn’t want to read an article about what life-saving gizmos are aboard the airplanes flying out of the local port?

Food retailers, eateries and the restaurant supply chain are another angle that can fit many beats – a radio report Wednesday caught my ear; it said that as trans fat products were removed from our food supply, the blood levels of these dangerous fats have declined accordingly in Americans.   How has removing trans fat affected production, development and pricing of foodstuffs, and how have the costs rippled out? 

Valentine’s Day.   Always a fun one, with angles from retail to the floral supply chain.  Precious metals costs once again are probably crimping jewelers; you might want to look at greeting card trends or CNN’s story about ‘three weird apps for Valentine’s Day’ for other notions. 

Presidents Day.  There’s always the perennial long-weekend/tourism story, along with appliance-store sales.  You could inject a bit of tongue-in-cheek humor with a piece on CEO pay and turnover in your area; I notice Challenger, Gray & Christmas are out with their latest chief executive turnover report recording a big jump in departing CEOs in January.

By Flickr user Jack Zalium

The Oscars (Feb. 26) I hope to do a full-blown post on business angles to the Academy Awards, the cinema business and related angles, but it’s worth noting now to mark your calendars and start eyeing cineplexes and old theater marquees for ideas.   Same goes for Mardi Gras (Feb. 21) which appears to be an increasingly festive day for markets far flung from New Orleans.

Also, by some unknown decree, online lists of holidays and observances also say that February is host to myriad other special days and weeks.  What I’d really love to see is a meta story about the marketing, lobbying and sheer gumption behind the establishment of such unlikely events as World Nutella Day, Car Insurance Day and International Hoof-care Month.  I guess industries can throw a dart at the calendar and issue releases declaring whatever they want, but a real story about the industry thought process and deliberation behind, say, Sweet Potato Month would be quite interesting.  Does it really help yam awareness?

 Take Pet Dental Health Month; who thought that up?  My vet is offering a 10-percent discount on cleanings, extractions and other procedures performed in February; she even advised me to wait on certain doggie dental care until then to take advantage of the promo.  It’s a decent peg for looking at specialty animal practices like dental, orthopaedic surgery (some doctors roam from practice to practice as visiting surgeons) and other niches in the burgeoning animal care market.

Meanwhile telecommuters, Florida strawberries, condoms, ukeleles, sled dogs and Liberace are among only a few of the other honorees in this action-packed month – and most with a business nugget in there somewhere.

By Flickr user madgerly

In case you haven’t heard, food giant General Mills is experiencing a bit of a backlash over its newly launched Multi-Grain Peanut Butter Cheerios. People concerned about the cereal’s impact on those with peanut allergies have protested the new flavor; voices are particularly vehement among mommy bloggers – some of whom even have called for a ban on the new flavor.  The peanut-butter Cheeiros, protesters say, are too similar to regular Cheerios so popular as a toddler snack, and could cause deathly illness in kids who unwittingly share them. 

The controversy shines a light on the growing problem peanut allergies present not only for their sufferers but as a liability for food purveyors, caregivers and even big corporations like airlines – some of which have replaced the ubiquitous in-flight peanuts with pretzel nuggets, to the woe of high-protein, low-carb flyers.  At one point, the federal Department of Transportation even considered an outright ban on peanuts for commercial flights.

And it’s worth noting too that the burgeoning ranks of peanut allergy sufferers also have created opportunties for niche businesses from nut-free bakeries to book authors to clinics to – yes, people who train peanut-detecting service dogs.  

According to the Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network, peanut allergies among children have tripled since 1997.  No one knows why, but it’s an emotional topic that stirs heated debate on both sides when preventative measures are discussed – as General Mills is being reminded this week. 

Seek out your region’s food-processing firms, commercial bakeries, canneries and the like (the state agriculture department can probably help with a list).  If your region isn’t home to any big food firms, you still can localize this story in a number of way, including:

Restaurants or food-service firms.  I’ve actually heard of people walking into a Thai restaurant demanding peanut- free cuisine.  That’s a pretty far-fetched request, but how do restaurants handle cross-contamination issues, employee training about food allergies and other practical considerations?  What are their rights in, perhaps, refusing to serve patrons who make peanut allergies (or other food-related medical issues) known, for fear of liability?   What about food-service and catering firms, especially those that handle school lunches and hospital meals, for example?  How have menus, packaging, service protocols and other business considerations changed as allergies have burgeoned?

Food distributors and grocers.  How have product offerings shifted to respond to the allergy issue?  Are pastries, for example, labeled differently?   Do ice creams feature prominent “peanut products” stickers, or do food makers opt for almonds and other less controversial nuts?  How is demand for peanut butter holding up, and foods containing peanut butter, from pudding to frozen sandwiches?   What about peanut oil, peanut snacks and their substitutes – what are consumers seeking?  

Day care centers.  How do for-profit caregiving facilities handle the issue — in terms of staff training, disclosure requirements, snack policies, and the like.  Are the administrative burdens of managing allergy policies costly? 

Liability insurance.  Talk with financial and insurance advisors — have recommendations for businesses like those above changed in light of greater allergy concerns?   What about homeowners, for that matter: If you unwittingly sicken someone – or worse – by serving a peanut-laden concotion, what is your exposure?

New niche businesses.  As mentioned, a number of bakeries appear to specialize in nut-free goods, and as this national nut-free directory shows, so a number of other eateries and food kitchens.  Worth a look for companies in your area,and do Google “nut-free” plus a geographic term from your region to likely find more.  A great source of trend and small-business stories.

Brian Grow and Matthew Bigg of Reuters hit the streets of Miami to see if some Medicare providers were legitimate. In two buildings, they found 26 companies billing Medicare. They checked incorporation records and found “information that one government official said could prompt ‘a serious criminal investigation’ of some of the companies,” the story says.

They start the story with the tale of a fake AIDS clinic that had billed Medicare for more than $4.5 million. Of the man behind the clinic, Michel De Jesus Huarte, they write:

“He had hatched a plan to steal millions more from Medicare by forming at least 29 other shell companies – paper-only firms with no real operations….

“Hundreds of others have used the veil of corporate secrecy to help steal hundreds of millions of dollars from one of the nation’s largest social service programs.”

Today’s Tips: Use Secretary of State databases and National Provider Identification numbers to get details behind Medicare providers.

Brian Grow hit the streets looking for Medicare fraud for a Reuters investigations into shell companies.

“The Medicare system is so fragmented and hard to follow that you have to run searches across multiple sets of databases,” says Brian, who recently won the 2011 Foreign Press Association Media Award for Financial/Economic Reporting for earlier reporting on the use of shell and shelf companies. Kelly Carr of the Reynolds Center shared in that award.

The incorporation records provided executive names. He put them into a spreadsheet to track how frequently executives and ownership changed and to find executives who controlled multiple medical entities, he says. He also ran the names of company owners and executives against civil and criminal cases.

He used company names to search for National Provider Identification numbers, which are assigned to health-care providers. He added all of the information to his spreadsheet, which took about week to create and another month to analyze.

Brian also won the Reynolds Center’s Barlett & Steele Award for Investigative Business Journalism in 2008 for reporting for BusinessWeek on how big creditors routinely collect debts that have been forgiven in the courts.

That’s especially true in this starting-over post-holiday season, when personal finance topics are hot and audiences are looking for ways to make better use of their time, money and other resources.  And the Associated Press has just served up a timely topic ripe for localizing in this feature, “Uninsured turn to daily deals sites for health care.”    Business writer Joseph Pisani explains that increasingly, sites like Groupon and LivingSocial, along with local counterparts, are offering discounted medical procedures from Botox to eye exams.  Individuals without health insurance may be leveraging the deals to get basic dental, vision and physical checkups, and even some insured folks are using the deals to fill gaps in their existing coverage or to reduce their out-of-pocket costs.

Daily deal sites such as Groupon and LivingSocial are helping some people fill holes in health insurance coverage. Photo: Groupon/AP

The AP story is a good national take on the topic — note the rich detail including a sampling of deals on health care procedures and a detailed explanation of how one consumer used deals and a credit-card promotion to save $1,300 on Lasik eye surgery.   But there is plenty of scope for localizing this subject matter and making it even more meaningful to readers in your market, as well as spotlighting  how local practitioners — who may already be using direct mail, e-mail, coupons and other tools — are using this form of promotion.   The story has the benefit of being useful to both consumers and small businesses with clip-and-save dos, don’ts and caveats.

It would be interesting, for example, to compare the costs and benefits of advertising via deals sites vs. the Valpak direct-mail coupons widely used by chiropractors, dentists, optometrists and other service providers.  A detailed breakdown of the expenses and returns of each method would be enlightening.  Some merchants already have publicly grumbled that participating in group deals erodes profits; is the same true for health care providers?  Or is luring in a repeat patient worth the up-front costs?  How are medical practice business models changing as the health care market evolves and the economy prompts consumers to seek bargain check-ups and procedures?

Don’t forget to peruse medical offers on local daily deals sites as well as the biggies; it’ll help you find area companies offering deals.  Here’s one online deal site directory searchable by city and ZIP code; others are out there.   You might find interesting background  information on DailyDealMedia.com, an industry publication.

One area I did not see touched on in the AP story is the legality of group-deal marketing by health care providers.  According to this article from Sun-Sentinel.com, practitioners may be running afoul of the law or of professional ethics by offering such deals, because the revenue-splitting model could be perceived as a kickback to the deal sites.  Others appear concerned that medical procedures will be commoditized by the approach; according to this DailyDealMedia article, the maker of invisible orthodontic products is dismayed by the deals.  The question is also arising on medical law blogs and other venues. Already, dental and chiropractic boards in Oregon have condemned the practice; you’ll definitely want to check with your state’s regulators and professional associations about concerns, any complaints received and pending actions related to group deals by health care providers.   Also check with insurers; does the use of group deals by insured consumers pose an accounting headache or other issue?

Photo by Flickr user kizette

And that’s good news for businesses that perhaps were idle during the hedonistic holidays but now are in demand as consumers try to whip themselves back into shape.  The annual phenomenon makes for some interesting and useful business features — or you could broaden it   out and take a look at your region’s service sector overall, and how it reflects the area’s economic recovery.  (The next non-manufacturing business index report from the Institute of Supply Management -- one of the better-known measures of the U.S. service sector — is due out Jan. 5 if you want to add some national context or derive story angles from the data on which sectors are expanding and which are contracting.)

Back to the ‘new year, new you’ business angles; here’s a look at specific services and industries you can target, depending on your beat.  But don’t hesitate to think beyond the perennial topics.  If you cover technology, find local apps developers creating self-help apps for mobile users.  If you cover health care, how about a story on preventative wellness, and how it’s marketed this time of year by major hospital systems — or how plastic surgeons are leveraging the annual urge to better ourselves.  Real estate?  Check in with home remodelers or plumbing contractors, and find out what sells best in January at hardware and home-goods supply stores.

Weight loss, of course, is the biggie among New Year’s resolutions.  And no wonder; check out this interactive obesity map from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; it graphically depicts how our collective waistlines have ballooned over the past couple of decades; the statistics are boggling.

You’ll want to check in with weight loss franchises, nutrition counselors, personal trainers and others people turn to for help in losing weight;  ask retailers about sales of activewear, athletic shoes, workout equipmen and exercise DVDs after the first of the year — how important is this burst of virtue to their annual bottom line?  Talk to supermarkets and food distributors; how do their sales shift after New Year’s Day — more carrots and less ice cream?

The research firm IBISWorld offers a report on the gym and fitness industry; this abstract  –says the sector has been quite resiliant since the recession. Does that hold true near you? ClubIndustry.com, a fitness sector trade journal, also has some interesting story nuggets on its site — who knew, for example, that the workout industry was going green?

Check with supermarkets about more carrots, less ice cream resolutions.

Weight Watchers has proclaimed 2012 “The Year to Believe” in its new ad campaign; if you cover marketing, a meta look at trends in self-improvement advertising would be interesting, especially with a personal finance sidebar on how to cut through the hype and spend wisely on weight loss counseling, special diet foods, gym memberships and the like.

Other areas ripe for the self-improvement story include the personal finance and storage/organizing industries.

People who may have put money woes on hold the last few months might now be seeking advice from debt counselors or financial planners.  Talking to those professionals about trends in debt, spending and money matters they hear about from clients could be a good way to reflect the local economy.

And of course, the de-cluttering and organizing business kicks into gear in January; many big-box stores feature row after row of plastic organizing totes while magazine headlines trumpet ‘clear the clutter’ advice.  The National Association of Professional Organizers can likely direct you to members in your neck of the woods; a profile of two or three practitioners — how they got started, what their business model is and how much they earn for various services — would be timely and interesting.

Robin Erb, Detroit Free Press

Inadequate nursing home care has created headlines across the country as cases of neglect increase. Robin Erb and Kristi Tanner of the Detroit Free Press found that inspectors in Michigan handed out serious citations nearly twice as often as the national average. In part one of the three-part series called “Trust and Neglect,” they offer readers the grim statistics:

“Over a recent, 34-month period analyzed by the Free Press, Michigan nursing homes accumulated $9.9 million in federal fines, the most of any state. That statistic, while troubling, doesn’t necessarily put Michigan at the bottom of national rankings because many states rely on state, rather than federal, fines to punish errant homes.

But Michigan nursing homes also have the ninth highest rate of serious violations per capita, according to a Free Press analysis of federal data. Over a three-year period, Michigan homes were cited for serious violations — incidents that harmed residents or put them in immediate jeopardy of harm — 2.7 times for every 100 residents. The national rate was 1.5.”

But they also look at factors that can lead to neglect.

Click the image to go to 'Trust and neglect: Special report on nursing homes in Michigan.'

“Describing horrific things that happen in healthcare is the easy part. It’s more difficult – but more accurate and fair – to find out why they happen,” Robin says. “Only then can we really understand how to better protect vulnerable patients.”

In parts two and three, they  explore why some troubled nursing homes remain open, and they focus on the homes where patients do receive good care – something many series don’t do.

Today’s Tip: “Use obituaries, funeral homes, lawsuits and death certificates to connect the human toll to the very dry, clinical reports,” Robin says.

Robin says violation reports only provide the age of the person who died, not the identify of staff, residents or family members. She says to use the age and the date of death to scan local obituaries, and lawsuits such as wrongful death claims.

“It doesn’t always work, but it often will,” she says.

Once you have a name, use death certificates to confirm the identity and to find relatives.

Screenshot from Mandy Locke's story on the feud between WakeMed and Rex Hospitals for the News & Observer.

Mandy Locke at The News & Observer gives readers a glimpse into the battle between WakeMed and Rex Healthcare, the area’s largest hospitals. She starts the story with a casual office meeting between golf buddies. After providing some market details about hospitals having to decide “whether they’d be predator or prey,” she returns to the office:

“After some friendly chat over lunch at his office about golf and vacations, Jenkins asked a potent question: ‘What if, one day, WakeMed were a part of the UNC system?’

Oxholm was startled. He told Jenkins that they should put the question aside unless ‘you want to talk about WakeMed buying Rex.’

That exchange hung in the air for a moment. It has lingered since, and it set the stage for the battles to come between Rex and WakeMed. Over the last year and a half, the fight has featured ambitious heart doctors and CEOs with major aspirations, well-connected lobbyists and public relations specialists trying to shape the public’s perception, and legislators questioning government ownership of a hospital.”

The series notes that Mandy spent about two months interviewing sources, and reviewing notes, letters between key players, financial documents and personal calendars to re-create events.

“I approached this as a story about people who said and heard things that led them to make some pretty drastic decisions,” Mandy says.

Today’s Tip: Ask about emotions as well as details.

Mandy says she started the project by creating a timeline of critical and semi-critical moments to see what had happened. For the critical moments, she compiled a list of the parties involved, she says.

“Some of these subjects weren’t so keen on talking about their emotions in these meetings, mostly because no one had ever asked them before. The more I asked, the more the information just flowed,” she says.

“I then compared memories, stripped it down to the events on which everyone could agree and started to build on that.”

Part two of the series walks readers through relationships with cardiologists that continued the battle.

And if that’s not your beat, consider reading on anyway; sometimes technology, workplace, small business, personal finance and other ties develop from the main issues.

• Insurance exchanges. The Department of Health and Human Services just awarded another $220 million in grants to help states plan and create the health insurance exchanges required by President Obama’s health-care reform package, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

Photo by Flickr user SarahMcD

If your state already has health-care exchange planning under way, check in to find out how that’s affected by the Supreme Court’s decision to address the constitutionality of the law.   As Politico points out, “States squirm over health exchanges,” and the decision of whether to proceed with planning to be ready by the Jan. 1 deadline or hold off in case the Supreme Court overturns the law.  (While health-care exchange aren’t required to be operational till 2014, the plans must be ready for review by 2013.) Minnesota, for example, is about to launch a site that lets consumers try out the exchange (even though actual policies won’t be sold.)

Look beyond the governmental issue:  How does the situation affect vendors like IT providers and consultants – small or medium businesses that may have been counting on a couple years’ worth of business?  And how are insurers gyrating to develop individual policies to be sold via the exchanges? Where is all the HHS grant money going?  It’s a good time for an update from the folks in your state who either are planning an exchange or lobbying against one.

• Flexible spending accounts.  About 24 shopping days are left for consumers to use up leftover cash in their accounts or lose it forever.  Stories outlining solutions are always appreciated by readers; here’s a good one from Forbes you can use as a model – and here’s another batch of fresh tips from Employee Benefit News.  (That site, by the way, is a little gold mine of workplace-related story ideas, such as the one about unusual employer-provided benefits such as free house cleaning and Botox injections.)
• Medicare open enrollment ends today.  Still time to get some tips and reminders online; one major change for next year, supposedly, help for people who fall into the “doughnut hole,” where prescription coverage is suspended until a dollar threshold is met.  And according to this White House blog post, many people have saved substantial amounts already thanks to the health-care reform rules; state-by-state lists of prescription drug savings and free wellness-care participation are linked to in the blog. This post by U.S. News & World Report is interesting food for thought and outlines a number of angles you can pursue on Medicare Part D providers in your region, such as the prevalence of higher co-pays and smaller covered-drug lists.  There are plenty of consumer caveats to be explored even after the Medicare deadline passes.

This photo of the now-closed Alcatraz Prison in California is by Flickr user Tim Pearce, Los Gatos.

Jack Dolan of the Los Angeles Times in July wrote about a prison surgeon who was the highest-paid state employee at $777,423 – although he hadn’t treated an inmate for six years because medical supervisors didn’t trust his clinical skills.

 After that story, Jack asked how many other doctors were doing non-medical tasks because they weren’t deemed safe. “Late last week, they sent a list of 30 doctors,” Jack says, who have collected an estimated $8.7 million since 2006. He writes:

“At least 30 medical professionals have collected their six-figure salaries for a cumulative 37 years in a kind of employment limbo after fellow doctors decided they were too dangerous to treat inmates but before the state’s lengthy discipline appeals process made a final decision on whether they should be fired, state records show.”

Jack Dolan

Among them: A doctor who earned $235,000 to deliver mail and another who earned $235,000 to review files in a storage room. 

Today’s Tips: Find out who pays state employees and request annual data on salaries.

Jack says he requests payroll data including payments beyond base pay for all government employees every year. For this story, he noted when a job title received higher than normal pay and asked if the person received back pay. The back pay was an indication of someone being fired and rehired.

“It helped a lot to break down their resistance to tell the whole story,” says Jack, who was a 2009 winner of the Reynolds Center’s Barlett & Steele Award for Investigative Business Journalism.

Stories about changes to household-name products are always compelling (Netflix price hike? Ocean Spray craisin recall?) and a consumer piece about the pros and cons of generics, the incentives Pfizer will offer patients to stay on Lipitor, health insurer policies about patented drugs and other personal health or finance issues is certainly timely.

But there’s another drug story coming back to the fore this week: The ongoing shortage of generic drugs in the U.S. — and you may want to scope out its effect on area health care systems, patients and any businesses related to the manufacture or distribution of pharmaceutical products.

Congress was expected to hold a hearing Wednesday on the matter; some reports say the number of scarce drugs — including chemotherapy and other life-or-death products — has tripled since 2005.   The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform will hear testimony from doctors, a pharmacists group and others about the shortage; it appears that video of the committee’s hearings is generally archived on its site so check here if you want to review it.

Curbs on Medicare reimbursements are generally blamed for making the drugs unprofitable to pharmaceutical companies to manufacture; though the Food and Drug Administration says manufacturing problems and theft are major factors as well, according to this Associated Press report from September.

If you cover health care, check out this hot-off-the-press Cleveland.com story “Drug shortages force hospitals to carefully manage supplies,” that leads with hospital pharmacists mixing up what sounds to the lay person like home-brewed anesthesia compounds to made do as shortages of more than 200 drugs persist.  That’s a story that would make just about any audience sit up and take notice, and it’s well worth pursuing the effects (or lack thereof) of any scarce pharmaceuticals on hospitals, clinics and doctors’ offices in your area.

Here’s the FDA’s official drug shortage list; you can use it as a sort of checklist when interviewing health care companies about the issue.  Note that the drug makers are listed; you can check to see if any are in your neck of the woods.  And that leads to another angle:  The business model of drug makers.  Not necessarily the big name-brand pharma companies but the regional generic makers that may eke out sales and profits making no-brand drug  that few consumers have heard of but that many hospital patients and others might receive in the course of treatment.   What’s the story on shortages from their end?  How are prices for ingredients trending, and availability?  Regulation?  And at what point does the profit margin on liquids and pills drop to the point where it’s no longer practical to make them?  What are their proposed solutions?  Here’s a StLToday.com article along those lines.

The Generic Pharmaceuticals Association may be able to guide you to local members; also ask pharmacists for leads to distributors in your region and trace local manufacturers through them.

And here are some tips from New York Times reporter Duff Wilson on covering the Lipitor-patent expiration.