Healthcare
Lenexa man’s exercise obsession underscores eating disorders’ gender neutrality
At one point when he was in college at Kansas State University, Jon Smith would jog as many as 20 miles a day. “If I wasn’t in the library and not in class,” he said, “I was running.” But Smith was far from healthy. His over-the-top regimen was a manifestation of an eating disorder known…
Blue Cross picket highlights insurance conundrum with eating disorders
The business day was ticking away as Sarah Wilcher waited on the phone. She was an hour into a desperate protest of an insurance decision about her seriously ill daughter, Piper. By around 5:10 p.m., she realized everybody was gone. “They just left me on hold,” Wilcher recalled recently of that day four years ago….
Kansas City-area supporters strive to reopen eating disorder clinic
Approximately 30 million Americans – two-thirds of them women – battle a clinically significant eating disorder during their lifetime, and hundreds of thousands of these people live in Missouri or Kansas,
California company finalizes agreement to buy two KC-area hospitals
The operator of two local Catholic hospitals has finalized their sale to a for-profit company based in Ontario, Calif. Ascension, the nation’s largest Catholic health system, said in a statement Tuesday that it had reached a definitive agreement to sell St. Joseph Medical Center in Kansas City, Mo., and St. Mary’s Medical Center in Blue…
The University of Kansas Hospital: Patient admitted Monday does not have Ebola
UPDATE 10/14/14 4:10 pm: A man who was admitted Monday to The University of Kansas Hospital suffering from diarrhea and who worked recently near Africa’s west coast does not have Ebola, the hospital said Tuesday afternoon. Results of blood tests showed the patient has not contracted the virus, which has killed more than 4,000 people in the…
Forum develops a healthy to-do list for Kansas City area
The Kansas City of the future would be a place where people have affordable medical care, policymakers work with the community on health issues and residents suffer less from chronic diseases and violence. That, at any rate, is the consensus that emerged Saturday at a forum in Kansas City, Mo. And it was just the…
With next Obamacare enrollment period set to start, navigators share successful strategies
Meridith Berry and her team learned a valuable lesson at an event where they were encouraging Hispanics to purchase coverage through the health insurance marketplace established by the Affordable Care Act: don’t use green card stock. Berry, a family financial education specialist with the University of Missouri Extension in Trenton, Mo., said the slip-up occurred…
Plans for ‘Healthy Campus’ in KCK move forward
Updated 9:09 a.m. Oct. 10 Kansas City, Kan., Mayor Mark Holland on Thursday unveiled an initiative to ensure that all residents can use a proposed new community center regardless of their financial circumstances. Holland announced the initiative as part of a community forum for a “healthy campus” proposed for an urban site just west of…
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,…