Seniors roll up sleeves in Bangor Clinic offers free pneumonia shots

BANGOR – By 10 a.m. Monday, more than 50 elderly Maine residents had rolled up their sleeves for a free pneumonia vaccine at a special drive-through clinic at the Penobscot Community Health Center on Union Street. The event marked the kickoff of “My Health, My Medicare,” a national campaign aimed at persuading Medicare recipients to take better care of themselves.

Bacterial pneumonia claims more than 40,000 lives in this country each year. Among those deaths, 80 percent to 90 percent occur in people age 65 and older. Doctors recommend that all people 65 and older, and anyone with a chronic illness such as asthma or heart disease, receive the pneumonia vaccine; those with chronic illnesses should get a booster every five years.

Dr. Charlotte Yeh, administrator of the regional Medicare office in Boston and a former emergency room physician, is touring New England this week aboard the colorful, hard-to-miss Medicare bus. She said Monday that 30 percent of Mainers on Medicare don’t get vaccinated against the dangerous lung disease. Providing free vaccine is one way to improve compliance with federal recommendations, she said.

“If people don’t get pneumonia, they won’t show up in the ER,” Yeh said. “This type of infection costs the Medicare program $3 billion a year. If we focus on preventing it, we can save lives and save money.”

Local hospitals, health care organizations and other groups sponsored the outdoor clinic, along with the federal Department of Health and Human Services. In addition to vaccines, sponsors handed out information about a variety of local, state and federal health programs, including Medicare.

Yeh said it was appropriate to start the New England leg of the promotional Medicare campaign in Bangor.

“We want to be sure rural Americans enrolled in Medicare take full advantage of the program’s benefits,” she said. Yeh pointed out that, in addition to the highly publicized Part D prescription drug benefit enacted in 2003, many other changes have been made in the 40-year-old program. “When Medicare was founded in 1965, it was designed to treat illnesses,” Yeh said. “We didn’t know very much about prevention then.”

Recent Medicare changes include 100 percent coverage for routine and preventive services, such as screenings for cardiac disease, diabetes and cancer. Vaccines against influenza and bacterial pneumonia are also covered, as is treatment to stop smoking.

The new Medicare campaign is intended to help seniors get focused on their health and health care, Yeh said. She laid out a rough schedule for older Mainers and their families and physicians to follow.

“Our hope is that seniors will use the month of September to really look at their health status,” she said. The annual, state-specific “Medicare and You” handbook will be issued in October, detailing the program’s benefits – including revised lists of the private companies that offer Part D prescription drug coverage. Open enrollment for Part D begins on Nov. 15 and runs through the end of December. “If you’re happy with the plan you’ve chosen, you don’t have to do anything,” Yeh said. “But if you want to make a change, that’s your opportunity.”

By the end of December, she suggested, seniors and their physicians should have formed a personalized health care plan for 2007, including diet, exercise and medications as well as routine appointments, screenings and immunizations.

The pneumonia vaccine administered at Monday’s clinic was provided by Eastern Maine Medical Center and St. Joseph Healthcare in Bangor, as well as by the drug manufacturer Merck.

Among those who took advantage of the opportunity was a minibusload of seniors from the Sunbury Village assisted living facility in Bangor. They munched oatmeal cookies and sipped apple juice while a nurse from Eastern Maine Medical Center boarded the bus to administer their injections. Raymond Guerette, 97, has some difficulty walking and said it was “wonderful” to be able to get vaccinated without having to leave his seat.

Shirley Chadbourne, 91, agreed. “This is a terrific service for old people, and we all qualify for that,” she said.

Barbara Urquhart, 73, drove over from Brewer with her friend Jeanne Murphy of Bangor. Urquhart said she never heard of the pneumonia vaccine until she had a heart attack last spring. “They gave me the vaccine before I left the hospital,” she said. She didn’t need another shot yet, she said, but she made a point of alerting her friends when she learned about the free clinic.

Murphy, 71, said she gets an influenza vaccine every year. “But I never knew I should get a pneumonia shot, too,” she said. “This is the first I ever heard of it.”

The Medicare bus left Bangor at about noon, headed for another free vaccine clinic Monday afternoon in Portland.