Behavioral health providers are required to provide free mobile response services to Missourians in a crisis.
Health Care
Posted inHealth
Regulators warn Blue Springs hospital that lab’s ‘deficient practices’ could put patients at risk
Regulators recently warned officials at St. Mary’s Medical Center in Blue Springs that “deficient practices” at its laboratory, including lax testing procedures and insufficient training, could endanger patients. The Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services informed hospital officials that they had found the lab to be in “immediate jeopardy,” the most severe level of […]
Posted inElections
Missouri voters restore abortion rights, but access is still on a long legal path
This story was updated at 1 p.m. on Nov. 8. Missouri voters bucked Republicans who control the state on Tuesday when they voted to add the right to abortion and other reproductive health care protections in the state constitution by passing Amendment 3. The measure was approved 51.6% to 48.4%, making Missouri the first state […]
Posted inState Government
Kansas families helping intellectually disabled kids are burnt out, doing care for free, KU study says
Kansans helping friends or family who have intellectual disabilities are burnt out. They miss work, sometimes get a new job entirely and regularly offer daily care while paying for that help from their own pockets, a University of Kansas study said. Those families appealed to the state for help, but the intellectual developmental disability, or […]
Posted inHealth
Loss of a Kansas City, Kansas, maternity ward reflects a ‘troubling trend’
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 […]
Posted inHealth
Missouri wants pharmacists to stay quiet about ivermectin, but a judge gets to say if that’s constitutional
A politically charged Missouri law that would prevent pharmacists from counseling patients or doctors about ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, two treatments that have been debunked for COVID-19, has been on hold for two years in federal court. Yet the Missouri Board of Pharmacy posted a guidance statement at the end of June that doesn’t mention that […]
Posted inHealth
Why Liberty Hospital could no longer go it alone and turned to Kansas for help
A hospital merger that caused a short-lived political storm tinged with Missouri-Kansas rivalries earlier this year kicks in with the start of July. Liberty Hospital, a 177-bed community hospital on the Missouri side of the metro, will be gobbled up by The University of Kansas Health System, a Kansas neighbor six times larger. The transaction, […]
Posted inHealth
Plasma you sell in east Kansas City could end up in medicine an ocean away
Michael Mullen donates blood plasma every Tuesday and Thursday. He has for 12 years. The money it brings in — a little over $100 a week — augments what he makes as a chef. He’s come to rely on it. “It helps supplement bill paying,” he said recently, smoking a cigarette outside the Biomat USA […]
Posted inState Government
Insurance covers mammograms, but Kansas patients are often on the hook for costly follow-up screenings
Delaying a diagnostic mammogram carries potentially deadly risks. Diagnostic mammograms, MRIs, sonograms and other types of specialized breast imaging can help detect breast cancer when it’s most treatable. Stage 1 breast cancer has an almost 100% survival rate. That’s why yearly mammogram testing is free for women over 40. But when doctors find something that […]
Posted inHealth, Uncategorized
Hospitals can stop reporting COVID numbers. That worries some public health officials
In some ways, a number changed how we viewed the pandemic. Early in the spread of COVID-19, the federal government made hospitals report how many of their beds were filled with patients suffering from the virus. News accounts — and often hospitals themselves — began sharing that tally with the public. The COVID count became […]