This summer, Providence Medical Center in Wyandotte County joined the growing list of community hospitals that no longer deliver babies. The for-profit hospital in a residential corner of northwest Kansas City, Kansas, said a decade of declining birth numbers prompted its decision to shutter its labor and delivery department at the end of June. Since […]
Health
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An Overland Park pharmacist quit the drug insurance game. He says it could save you money
Nick Romo spent a decade as a pharmacist under the rule of insurance companies and their middlemen. Too often, customers couldn’t get the drugs their doctors prescribed or ran into prices so high they walked away empty-handed. So two years ago, he opened Pharmington Drugs in south Overland Park in rebellion against it all. “I […]
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Missouri and Kansas keep losing pharmacies, and a key part of health care
Less than two years ago, neighbors near Brush Creek Boulevard and Troost Avenue had choices when they needed to pick up a prescription — or a carton of milk. A CVS pharmacy stood on the northeast corner of their intersection. Its retail rival, Walgreens, was just a block south at Troost and Emanuel Cleaver II […]
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Kansas City pharmacists’ walkout a year ago highlighted industry troubles. The problems haven’t gone away
Kansas City pharmacists walked off the job last September to protest working conditions and brought widespread attention to the troubled retail pharmacy business. The industry is battling economic pressures, changed buying habits and labor shortages.
Posted inState Government
Johnson County opens a facility for kids in mental health crises
Pulling children out of a mental health crisis is tricky. Some have just run away from home while others are coming off a violent attack on a sibling or parent. They’re thinking impulsively, acting desperately and sometimes doing irrational things to change their situations. That can land them at the Johnson County Juvenile Intake and […]
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Health officials: COVID surges across Kansas and Missouri as free shots go away
Last year, when COVID vaccines were still free, barely one in five Americans rolled up their sleeves for the latest dose. Now that some people will have to pay $100-plus for the shot, health officials expect even weaker demand when the next version of the vaccine comes out this fall. Meanwhile, a surprisingly strong summer […]
Posted inState Government
Around 120 Kansas kids are abandoned by their families because their mental health needs are too high
An adoptive mother knew that caring for three children from the Kansas foster system meant nurturing those kids through some truly serious problems. Yet the mother dramatically underestimated what she was taking on. Particularly the danger. Two of the adopted children made shanks out of broken glass and damaged toys. They busted up the bedrooms […]
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Safety-net clinics are struggling to fill the gap after a Utah health system closed a KCK health clinic
In a shadeless parking lot in downtown Kansas City, Kansas, last week, Lulu Herrera waited inside a parked mobile clinic. She was hoping to see a patient. Any patient. Herrera knew of hundreds who hadn’t had the care and medicine they needed since June 1, when Intermountain Health shuttered the Duchesne Clinic, just two years […]
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Kansas nursing home owners say they can’t afford to hire more staff. Advocates say it’s essential
The call came late on a cold night in February, from the Overland Park, Kansas, nursing home where Georann Whitman’s mom was living. “They said that they found her on the floor,” Whitman said. “She had gotten up in the middle of the night and had fallen.” Whitman’s 86-year-old mom, Ann Collins, had dementia. She […]
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How Missouri is getting more people to the dentist — for more than a pretty smile
Missouri Medicaid began covering teeth cleanings, and almost no other routine dental work, for adults a few years ago. But the bill for the dentist actually peering in your mouth to check teeth and gums went to the patient. While some dentists wrote off the cost of the dental exam, many patients just stayed away […]