Kansas Health Institute | Information For Policy Makers. Health for Kansans.

OTTAWA — The community mental health center here is running out of money. So are others around the state.

According to the Kansas Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services, nine of the state’s 27 centers spent more than they took in last year.

In response, centers have been laying off workers, freezing salaries and benefits. Some have sold buildings to help make ends meet.

Now they are trying to figure out how to deal with the 10 percent cut in Medicaid rates ordered by the governor to help balance the state budget. That cut became effective Jan. 1.

“I had to lay off 16 people last year. It was a very hard thing to do,” said Diane Drake, executive director at the Elizabeth Layton Center. “I didn’t want go through that again, so this year I instituted a 10 percent pay reduction for anyone who was making $30,000 or more. For those making between $24,000 and $30,000, there was a 5 percent reduction.”

There is a hiring freeze and she also froze the center’s contributions to employee retirement accounts.

In the past year, cuts in state spending have reduced the center’s $8 million budget by $840,000.

The 10 percent cut in Medicaid reimbursement rates announced in November is expected to cost the center another $70,000 a month.

“That’s a huge amount of money for us,” Drake said. “So what we’ve ended up doing, essentially, is we’ve balanced our budget on the backs of our employees, and now I’m doing everything I can do to keep morale up.”

Sumner Mental Health Center in Wellington also is in trouble.

“We went through our staff reduction two years ago,” said Greg Olson, the center’s executive director. “After that, we did something different, we stopped providing health insurance for our employees and we sold one of our two buildings. That let us break even.”

Olsen said the center’s employees have had one pay raise in five years.

Many clients who once had health insurance that helped pay for the center’s services no longer do because of aviation industry layoffs.

The Sumner Mental Health Center, like others across the state, also has many clients with low paying jobs and no health insurance who cannot qualify for Medicaid.

Olson and Drake said they’ve been forced to institute policies requiring their uninsured patients to pay for services.

Dwight Young, executive director at the Center for Counseling and Consultation Services in Great Bend, said his center is doing the same thing.

“We’re still going to be here for people in crisis,” he said. “But for those who aren’t in crisis, there will a waiting list.”

Young said his agency was among those that lost money last year.

“I had to take $70,000 out of our maintenance fund to make December,” he said.

This year, he said, is sure to be worse.

“With the 10 percent cut in Medicaid and the cuts in the state grants, we’re taking a $462,425 hit this year,” Young said. “That’s out of a $4.2 million budget.”

Young said in June he will complete his 40th year as a mental health center director.

“I can tell you that I have never encountered anything like what we’ve been through in the last two years,” he said.