Healthcare
Ex-employees of KC-area hospitals sold to Prime Healthcare sue over severance pay
Just days after Prime Healthcare Services agreed to buy two Kansas City-area hospitals, laid-off employees of two other area hospitals owned by Prime sued the company, claiming they were not provided with promised severance benefits. The suit seeks class-action status on behalf of other terminated employees. It says 49 workers were let go immediately after…
Company seeking to buy KC-area Catholic hospitals inspires condemnation, admiration
Update: Prime Healthcare Services now faces a lawsuit from employees laid off from two other Kansas City-area the company owns. Co-authored by Dan Margolies, health editor at KCUR, Kansas City Public Media. Prime Healthcare Services, the for-profit California health care company that has agreed to acquire two nonprofit Kansas City area hospitals, is no stranger to…
2014 primary candidates for Kansas insurance commissioner
No fewer than five candidates are seeking the Republican nomination for Kansas insurance commissioner, an office that has been dominated by Republicans since its creation in 1871. In the 20th century, only one Democrat has held the office, Kathleen Sebelius, who used it as a springboard to become Kansas governor in 2003 and, in 2009,…
Carondelet Health Agrees To Sell Two KC-area Hospitals
A West Coast hospital company has agreed to acquire two hospitals and other related facilities as part of a deal with Kansas City, Mo.-based Carondelet Health, the parties announced Monday. The buyer is Ontario, Calif.-based Prime Healthcare Services, which has signed a letter of intent that includes the acquisition of St. Joseph Medical Center in…
New Missouri law pays dividends for Kansas City CARE Clinic
A year and a half ago, a local safety-net clinic underwent one of the most significant changes in its more than four decades of serving the metropolitan area: it went from a purely free provider to one that also accepted paying patients covered by insurance. Known for years as the Kansas City Free Health Clinic,…
Med school program emphasizes career possibilities for urban teens
Shannon North can preach and preach to her students that their aspirations are achievable, that advanced education is attainable. And she does just that, as the college and career facilitator at Hogan Preparatory Academy in Kansas City, Mo. The charter school, at 1221 E. Meyer Blvd., has a student population where virtually all the attendees…
Missouri becomes third state to enact ‘Right To Try’ drug therapy law
Missouri residents who have exhausted conventional disease cures will have access to experimental drugs under legislation signed on Monday by Gov. Jay Nixon. The so-called Right to Try legislation gives patients and their doctors the ability to procure drugs that have yet to gain approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration if the pharmaceutical…
Dental funds for the poor caught in Missouri budget battle
Approximately $18 million that would restore basic dental benefits for hundreds of thousands of low-income Missouri adults is in limbo due to a sweeping budget action by Gov. Jay Nixon. Acting under what he termed his constitutional duty to balance the state budget, Nixon late last month restricted or vetoed approximately $1.1 billion in spending…
Rural Kansas hospital bolsters recruitment by enticing “missionary” doctors
Though 25 percent of Americans still live in rural areas, only 10 percent of doctors do, according to the National Rural Health Association, and finding physicians and other medical professionals willing to work in the hinterlands remains a serious, growing problem in Kansas and other parts of the United States. But in Kearny County, on…
KC-area project utilizes churches for TIPS on addressing AIDS among blacks
When activists worldwide marked three decades since the emergence of a mysterious immune disease, Kansas City, Kan., participants posted a timeline of key events in the fight against the AIDS pandemic in a building foyer in their community. Yet this was no ordinary lobby; it was the main entrance to Mt. Carmel Church of God…