Category: News

As many as 300,000 spectators are expected in downtown Nashville when the National Football League (NFL) holds its annual draft from April 25 – 27, 2019, in Music City. The event, which is free and open to the public, will bring worldwide attention to Tennessee. To assist those who might be attending the event, the Tennessee Department of Commerce and Insurance (TDCI) is offering safety, insurance, and scam prevention tips.
OUTDOOR EVENT SAFETY. Attending an outdoor event with thousands of people creates unique safety challenges. Remember these tips to stay safe:
• Familiarize yourself with the locations of medical and safety tents.
• Know what items are and are not prohibited before you arrive. Information about the event can be found http://static.nfl.com/static/content/public/photo/2019/03/20/0ap3000001023537.pdf.
• Use the buddy system. If attending with a friend or a family member, designate a person who you can trust to watch out for you and vice versa.
• Identify a place to meet friends in case you get split up or an emergency occurs.
• Report any suspicious persons to a member of security.
• Never pick up any packages or items that do not belong to you. Report any suspicious packages to a member of security.
• HOTEL SAFETY. Staying in a hotel brings its own set of safety challenges. If you choose to stay in a hotel while enjoying the NFL Draft festivities, remember:
• Read the escape plan posted in your room. These often can be found on your hotel room’s door. If one is not posted in your room, request one from the front desk.
• Choose a hotel or vacation rental that is equipped with both smoke alarms and fire sprinklers.*
• If you hear an alarm, leave immediately, closing all doors behind you.
• DRIVER SAFETY. With hundreds of thousands of people expected on the roads during the three-day event, consumers are urged to take these extra precautions to ensure their safety:
• Put the vehicle in park before sending a text or setting navigation services.
• Never drink and drive. Don’t get behind the wheel while impaired — whether it’s due to exhaustion, medicine, alcohol or recreational drugs.
• When you’re behind the wheel of a vehicle, don’t use your phone. That means no texts, no social media, no videos, no photos or anything – except driving.
• Obey speed limits and keep your eyes on the road.
• Keep an eye out for pedestrians and scooters.

Tennessee is activating substance abuse resources and statewide call lines to help patients affected by the arrests of doctors and nurses in a crackdown on prescription opioid abuse.
Indictments were unsealed last week charging more than 30 medical professionals in Tennessee with illegally prescribing and distributing millions of painkillers.
A federal grand jury indicted Dr. Harrison Yang, 75, of Manchester, Tennessee, with healthcare fraud violations.
In a sperate case, Nurse Practitioner Jonathan White, 49, of Tullahoma, Tennessee, was indicted on three counts of healthcare fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud.
According to a news release, TennCare members receiving services from any of the affected clinics can find assistance coordinating care by reaching out to their assigned health plans.
For addiction treatment services, Tennessee’s REDLINE operates 24 hours a day at (800) 889-9789. The state also has a 24-hour-a-day crisis line for anyone experiencing a mental health crisis at (855) CRISIS-1 or (855) 274-7471.

The Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT) is planning several major road improvements throughout the state.
On Thursday, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee and Tennessee Department of Transportation Commissioner Clay Bright released TDOT’s annual three-year transportation program, featuring approximately $2.1 billion in infrastructure investments for 139 individual project phases. The program provides support for Gov. Lee’s first Executive Order by funding work on 86 highway and bridge projects in economically distressed and at-risk counties.
One project in Coffee County will be State Route-2 US-41 (Hillsboro Hwy.) From Joe Hickerson Road to AEDC right of way road.

A record number of area nonprofits are busy preparing in a big way for The Big Payback’s sixth annual, 24-hour online giving day.
A total of 964 Middle Tennessee nonprofits — including schools and religious institutions — from 35 counties will be participating in The Big Payback, an initiative of The Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee, on Thursday, May 2.
The record total includes 118 organizations representing 23 counties that will be participating in The Big Payback for the first time. Categories include human services, education, community improvement, arts and culture, youth development, animal welfare, health, housing and shelter, and the environment.
The Big Payback is a community-wide online giving day designed to give the public the opportunity to pay back the nonprofits that make this a place we are proud to call home. Starting at midnight on May 2, there are 24 hours to make donations to a wide swath of participating local nonprofits at TheBigPayback.org.
In its first five events, The Big Payback has helped organizations raise more than $12.5 million in donations as well as foster an impressive 24,716 first-time gifts, making possible awareness of and solutions to pressing needs in our community.
Last year’s event raised a record of more than $3.1 million in donations, from 22,071 total gifts.
“The Big Payback’s slogan is ‘Live Here. Give Here’ and provides an easy and fun way for our community to show our local pride and give back,” said Ellen Lehman, president of The Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee.
Participating nonprofits from Coffee County include:
— CASA Works, Inc.
— Citizens for Homeless Relief, Inc. / Shepherd’s House
— Coffee County Children’s Advocacy Center
— Coffee County Humane Society
— Coffee County Imagination Library
— Coffee County Senior Citizens, Inc.
— Hands-On Science Center, Inc.
— Haven of Hope
— Hospice of the Highland Rim Foundation, Inc.
— Manchester Municipal Arts Commission
— Millennium Repertory Company
— One Day of Hope of Coffee County
— Partners for Healing
— StepUpTN
— Tullahoma Fine Arts Center
— Tullahoma Community Foundation
— Tullahoma South Jackson Civic Association
— United Way of the Highland Rim
For more information, call 615-321-4939 or visit www.cfmt.org.

On Wednesday afternoon Grundy County deputies responded to a home on Flat Branch Road, in Tracy City, Tennessee where two people were reportedly dead inside the house.
Sheriff Clint Shrum said that 62-year-old Renee Oliver and 64-year-old Richard Oliver were found deceased.
At this time the sheriff said it appears to be a murder-suicide, Shrum says they believe Richard shot Renee multiple times, before killing himself.
The Grundy County Sheriff’s Office is working to uncover what lead to the incident that took place.

The U.S. Census Bureau is recruiting thousands of workers for temporary jobs available nationwide in advance of the 2020 Census. With more than a thousand positions available in the Middle Tennessee area. Recruiters for the Census Bureau will be onsite in Bedford County today (April 19) at a multi-vendor Job fair. The job fair will be located at 220 Tulip Road in Shelbyville, TN. Applicants can also go to 2020census.gov/jobs to apply for many positions open in Tennessee.
By visiting the website applicants have the opportunity to apply for a range of positions, including recruiting assistants, office operations supervisors, clerks, census field supervisors and census takers. The positions will be located across four Area Census Offices statewide and offer flexible work hours, including daytime, evenings and weekends.

The Tennessee House has passed a bill that aims to clamp down on voter-registration drives.
House Bill 1079, sponsored by Rep. Tim Rudd, R-Murfreesboro, would fine civic groups organizing voter-registration drives upwards of $10,000 for submitting large numbers of inaccurate or insufficient voter registration forms. Advocacy groups and even individuals could be faced with criminal misdemeanor charges.
Charlane Oliver, co-founder and president of the Nashville-based Equity Alliance, said she thinks the penalties outlined in the bill are unnecessarily harsh.
“How do you determine intent, when someone is providing you a form, that you don’t know whether the information is true or not? You have to go off their word, we cannot verify that, and they’re leaving that burden up to groups to do,” she said.
Supporters of the bill, including Secretary of State Tre Hargett, have said HB 1079 is needed to improve election security.
Oliver said local election commissions are supposed to verify voter registration, not the groups helping people register to vote. Last year, she said, a coalition of more than 20 organizations, collectively called the Tennessee Black Voter Project, registered more than 90,000 people across the state, most from majority black areas such as Memphis and surrounding Shelby County.
“And it’s based on the experience that they had back in November, October/November of last year, when we did the Tennessee Black Voter Project,” Oliver said. “This is the driver and motivation for the bill.”
Civic groups often organize voter-registration drives in communities where people lack access to transportation, and in rural areas. Oliver said volunteers are on hand to help people understand the registration process.
“People don’t understand that we have a 30-day cutoff in Tennessee, so you must be registered to vote 30 days in advance,” she said. “But most people are not paying attention until at least two weeks before an election, so it’s too late for them by then.”
Oliver said Tennesseans have a dismal record when it comes to voting. Studies have shown state voter turnout consistently ranks among the lowest in the country.

Attorney General William P. Barr and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Alex M. Azar III, together with multiple law enforcement partners, on Wednesday announced enforcement actions involving 60 charged defendants across 11 federal districts, including 31 doctors, 7 pharmacists, 8 nurse practitioners, and 7 other licensed medical professionals, for their alleged participation in the illegal prescribing and distributing of opioids and other dangerous narcotics and for health care fraud schemes.
On April 16, 2019, a federal grand jury indicted Dr. Harrison Yang, 75, of Manchester, Tennessee, with healthcare fraud violations.
This case was investigated by the FBI, HHS-OIG, DEA, and TBI.
U.S. Attorney J. Douglas Overbey said, “Today is an example of how our office is working with our law enforcement partners in the Appalachian Regional Prescription Opioid Strike Force to identify and prosecute dishonest medical professionals and others engaged in health care fraud schemes involving illegal prescription, distribution, possession, and use of opioids.”
The charges involve individuals contributing to the opioid epidemic, with a particular focus on medical professionals involved in the unlawful distribution of opioids and other prescription narcotics, a priority for the Department. According to the CDC, approximately 115 Americans die every day of an opioid-related overdose.

In a sperate case, Nurse Practitioner Jonathan White, 49, of Tullahoma, Tennessee, was indicted on three counts of healthcare fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud. According to the indictment, White and co-conspirators were employed by MedManagement Inc., which managed Pain MD located in Franklin, Tennessee. Pain MD operated pain and wellness clinics throughout Middle Tennessee, North Carolina and Virginia. Between 2010 and continuing through 2015, the indictment alleges that White and two others provided services to patients, namely “Tendon Origin Injections,” which were neither medically necessary nor physically possible and provided medically unnecessary durable medical equipment and then submitted fraudulent claims to Medicare, Medicaid and TRICARE. These services were said to further the company’s business model by increasing revenues and to personally enrich Pain MD providers and executives. The indictment further alleges that White and the co-conspirators trained other providers on methods to increase productivity, including methods on how to control the patient and allow them to treat patients with such medically unnecessary injections and threatening to dismiss them as patients and stop writing prescriptions for narcotic pain medication if they did not comply. According to the indictment, White and others submitted more than $3.5 million in false claims to Medicare, Medicaid and TRICARE.