Dreena Reed has Medicare coverage, so she wasn’t personally affected when Textron Aviation cut off striking workers’ health insurance. But she’s worried about her daughter’s family. Her son-in-law is also on strike, and the company-sponsored health insurance covers him, Reed’s daughter and their kids. “That just goes to show that they’re not caring about their […]
Health
The Wichita Beacon provides the latest trustworthy health care news stories for the Wichita, Kansas community.
Posted inWichita
COVID vaccines have arrived in Wichita. Here’s what else you need to stay healthy
Sedgwick County is coming off a summer COVID wave as it heads into cold and flu season. Health officials hope that surge prompts far more people to sign up for the new COVID vaccine, which is recommended annually for people 6 months and older. Last year, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported […]
Posted inHealth
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 […]
Posted inHealth
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
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 […]
Posted inHealth
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 […]
Posted inState Government
The newest abortion law in Kansas requires putting questions to patients. Here’s what that means
What’s the harm in asking? Abortion rights supporters say quite a bit. Republicans in the state Legislature are trying to gather more data about the practice. Starting July 1, any medical professional performing an abortion is required by Kansas statute to ask patients their reasons for getting it. The law passed the Kansas Legislature this […]
Posted inHealth
Internal tensions preceded sweeping changes at closed Wichita abortion clinic
Wichita’s largest abortion clinic remains closed more than a month after it stopped seeing patients, amid a dramatic shakeup in leadership and mass resignations by doctors and other key staff.
Posted inKansas
Experts: U.S. hospitals prone to cyberattacks like one that hurt patient care at Ascension in Wichita
In the wake of a debilitating cyberattack against one of the nation’s largest health care systems, Marvin Ruckle, a nurse at an Ascension hospital in Wichita, said he had a frightening experience: He nearly gave a baby “the wrong dose of narcotic” because of confusing paperwork. Ruckle, who has worked in the neonatal intensive care […]
Posted inState Government
Two years after Roe v. Wade fell, what’s changed around abortion in Kansas?
It’s been two years since the U.S. The Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade and remade the national landscape of abortion law. That ruling cleared the way for many states to ban abortion or enact restrictions on the procedure. Kansas voters, meantime, voted convincingly less than two months later to protect abortion rights, and […]