Medicaid
Kansas City-area hospitals are being fined for ‘excessive’ readmission rates
Twenty hospitals in the Kansas City area will be penalized by Medicare starting Oct. 1 for excessive readmissions, although eight of them will be hit with lower fines than in Medicare’s previous round of penalties.
In Kansas, a new approach to heart disease, stroke
A new health care partnership, looked upon as a potential model for the rest of the country, is taking direct aim at heart disease and stroke in northwest Kansas. The federally funded initiative — the Kansas Heart and Stroke Collaborative — encompasses the University of Kansas Hospital along with 13 rural health centers and hospitals,…
Suit seeks to force feds to disclose Missouri health insurance rates
A Missouri consumers group has sued the Department of Health and Human Services over its alleged failure to disclose health insurance rates filed with the state. The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in federal court in St. Louis by the Consumers Council of Missouri, comes just six weeks before the enrollment period for coverage under the Affordable…
Documentary casts light on Kansas City’s mental health care woes
The state of Kansas City’s mental health care services is dire, according to a forthcoming new documentary. Journalist and documentary filmmaker Michael Price’s Lost Minds: KC’s Mental Health Crisis focuses on the growing number of fraught confrontations between severely mentally ill people and police on Kansas City’s streets. The locally produced documentary airs Wednesday, Oct. 1, at…
Ruling on in-home Medicaid services raises concerns
Karen Barezinsky is looking for an answer to what she says is a simple question: Are the people who run Kansas’ Medicaid program planning to cut the supports she and her husband use to keep her son, Ray Santin, who’s paralyzed from his neck down, out of a nursing home? “I can’t find out anything,”…
Kansas lawmakers lead fight to delay physician supervision rules
U.S. Rep. Lynn Jenkins and U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran are leading a congressional effort to delay enforcement of Medicare regulations requiring physician supervision of outpatient treatments like chemotherapy and intravenous infusions. The rules are intended to improve patient safety. But Jenkins, Moran and several advocacy groups, including the Kansas Hospital Association, say they would burden…
Medical PACs concentrate spending on incumbents
Political action committees for medically related groups in Kansas tended to throw their money behind incumbent House members before this year’s primary — even if those members did not support all of the groups’ political initiatives. Fifteen medically related PACs raised about $253,000 and spent about $125,000 this year in the reporting period that ended…
Overuse of antipsychotic drugs in some Kansas nursing homes endangering patients
TOPEKA — Experts say powerful antipsychotic drugs — sometimes given in combination — are used too much and often inappropriately as “chemical restraints” or sedatives to control the behavior of Kansas nursing home residents suffering from Alzheimer’s or other dementias, and that efforts to curb the practice so far are showing weak results compared with other…
Kansas mental health system under increasing stress
OSAWATOMIE — One day last month, Osawatomie State Hospital had 254 patients in its care — almost 50 more than its optimal capacity. The overcrowded conditions forced a few dozen patients, all of them coping with a serious mental illness and likely a danger to themselves or others, to be triple-bunked in rooms meant for two….
Survey Showing Spike In Kansas’ Uninsured Rate Questioned
Remember that headline-grabbing report last week that said Kansas was the only state in the nation to see a significant increase in its uninsured rate? Well, it’s looking more and more suspect. Some officials were immediately skeptical when the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index survey results were released, showing that the adult uninsured rate in Kansas had increased by…