KHI News Service specializes in coverage of health issues facing Kansans. It is an independent news gathering agency with a staff of four reporters that exists within the Kansas Health Institute. KHI News Service reports are made available free of charge to various other news outlets, including all members of the Kansas Press Association.
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A bill that would tax makers or first vendors of soda pop and other sugary drinks at 1 cent per teaspoon of sugar is scheduled to be heard Wednesday by the Senate Assessment & Taxation Committee
0 | Mar. 11, 2010 |
After making substantial changes, a House committee on Thursday approved a bill that assigns new duties and in some cases titles for the different levels of Emergency Medical Services workers.
0 | Mar. 11, 2010 |
The Senate Ways and Means Committee on Thursday upheld proposed cuts in the budgets of the Kansas Health Policy Authority and the Kansas Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services.
0 | Mar. 11, 2010 |
A proposed constitutional amendment meant to protect Kansans from a possible "individual mandate" to have health insurance "is a symbolic measure and nothing more," according to a KU law professor who clerked under U.S. Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Byron White.
0 | Mar. 11, 2010 |
A bill that sets the stage for requiring state-regulated insurance plans to cover autism was heard Wednesday in the Senate insurance committee.
0 | Mar. 11, 2010 |
Some of the Legislature's strongest supporters of early childhood development programs signed off on sharp cuts in children's programs, re-emphasizing the signal from Senate GOP leaders that tax increases will be necessary.
0 | Mar. 10, 2010 |
“There’s nothing in here that puts a focus on quality of care. It's a sieve,” said Mitzi McFatrich of Kansas Advocates for Better Care.
0 | Mar. 10, 2010 |
A compromise appears to be in the works on a proposal to expand tax incentives for companies that create or maintain jobs in Kansas.
0 | Mar. 10, 2010 |
A bill that would tax makers or first vendors of soda pop and other sugary drinks at 1 cent per teaspoon of sugar is scheduled to be heard Wednesday by the Senate Assessment & Taxation Committee
0 | Mar. 10, 2010 |
Advocates for the disabled stuck 58 crosses in the ground outside the Statehouse in an effort to call attention to the 58 who have died while on the state's waiting list for Medicaid-funded in-home services.
0 | Mar. 10, 2010 |
Opponents weigh in on tobacco tax proposal: Mom-and-pop cigar shops will be forced from business and shoppers will head to Missouri for smokes, booze, gasoline and other goods.
0 | Mar. 09, 2010 |
“My mother had a habit of leaving me – when I was 10 years old -- with my four brothers and sisters while my dad was in rehab for a week or two at a time,” Rachel Perkins, 19, said Monday during testimony before the House Federal and State Affairs Committee.
0 | Feb. 01, 2010 |
With police often called upon to deal with the mentally ill, special training is called for to help defuse tense situations before they become violent.
0 | Mar. 11, 2010 |
Some of the Legislature's strongest supporters of early childhood development programs signed off on sharp cuts in children's programs, re-emphasizing the signal from Senate GOP leaders that tax increases will be necessary.
0 | Mar. 11, 2010 |
The Senate Ways and Means Committee on Thursday upheld proposed cuts in the budgets of the Kansas Health Policy Authority and the Kansas Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services.
0 | Mar. 10, 2010 |
Advocates for the disabled stuck 58 crosses in the ground outside the Statehouse in an effort to call attention to the 58 who have died while on the state's waiting list for Medicaid-funded in-home services.
0 | Mar. 10, 2010 |
A bill that would tax makers or first vendors of soda pop and other sugary drinks at 1 cent per teaspoon of sugar is scheduled to be heard Wednesday by the Senate Assessment & Taxation Committee
0 | Mar. 03, 2010 |
House Health and Human Services Committee hears support for increasing minimal education requirement for licensed audiologists.
0 | Mar. 11, 2010 |
A bill that sets the stage for requiring state-regulated insurance plans to cover autism was heard Wednesday in the Senate insurance committee.
0 | Mar. 10, 2010 |
“There’s nothing in here that puts a focus on quality of care. It's a sieve,” said Mitzi McFatrich of Kansas Advocates for Better Care.
0 | Feb. 02, 2010 |
Two members of the Kansas House are urging an increase in wholesale liquor, wine and beer taxes to fund services for the mentally ill and developmentally disabled.
1 | Mar. 02, 2010 |
Medical providers and others are anxiously waiting to see what the Kansas Supreme Court will do about the state's $250,000 cap on awards for pain and suffering in medical malpractice cases.
1 | Feb. 16, 2010 |
“We’re not reaching the people we need to be reaching with our existing programs,” said Steve Denny, who runs an outreach program for seniors at the Independence-based Four County Mental Health Center.
1 | Feb. 02, 2010 |
Legislators this week are holdings hearings on a proposal that would mean stricter standards for some home day care centers.
1 | Jan. 25, 2010 |
Last year, nine of the state’s 27 community mental health centers spent more money than they took in.
1 | Jan. 11, 2010 |
Gov. Mark Parkinson, a Democrat, unveiled key details of a budget plan that calls for raising the state sales tax one cent and boosting tobacco taxes to forestall deeper cuts to schools and to roll back cuts in Medicaid provider rates. But Republican leaders said it would be a bad idea to raise taxes during a recession.
1 | Dec. 21, 2009 |
Nine states have been awarded almost $73 million in federal bonus payments for enrolling more children in their state-run health insurance programs. But Kansas wasn't among them despite expectations by some.
1 | Dec. 21, 2009 |
Gov. Mark Parkinson says he is ready to push for tax increases instead of continued budget cuts to core state services.
1 | Dec. 21, 2009 |
There may be many legitimate criticisms of the health reform bill expected to win approval this week in the U.S. Senate. But one of the most often heard — that it does little or nothing to contain costs — is off the mark, according to a lawyer involved in the congressional negotiations.
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March 12, 2010
A spike in prices charged by the largest Medicare drug plans raises a question about the impact regulated health insurance marketplaces would have on prices.
March 12, 2010
There's little consensus among bloggers about trends in public opinion toward the health care overhaul bills.
March 12, 2010
Democrats Thursday looked for a way forward on health reform legislation as colleagues in the House questioned cost and provisions in the bill before considering their support for the measure.
March 12, 2010
The Democrats' plan for passing the health overhaul has been waylaid by the Senate parliamentarian, who ruled President Obama must first sign into law the Senate bill overhaul bill before senators could consider separate legislation that would alter it on behalf of House members.
March 12, 2010
Lawrence Memorial Hospital is offering a three-part heart health series, and the first one starts Monday.
March 12, 2010
The gene sets of a four-member family were analyzed in research that suggested parents pass fewer gene mutations than thought to their offspring.
March 11, 2010
Law professors on Thursday disagreed on the effect of a proposed state constitutional amendment that seeks to allow Kansans to reject any federal health care requirement to purchase insurance.
March 11, 2010
As they scrambled recently to trace the source of a salmonella outbreak that has sickened hundreds around the country, investigators from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention successfully used a new tool for the first time — the shopper cards that millions of Americans swipe every time they buy groceries.
March 11, 2010
Too many pregnant women who want to avoid a repeat cesarean delivery are being denied the chance, concludes a government panel that urged doctors to rethink litigation-spurred policies that have swung the pendulum back toward the days of “once a C-section, always a C-section.”
March 11, 2010
Me Minus 10 got off to a rocky start two weeks ago: No sooner had I pledged to lose 10 pounds than I got, first, a GI-tract malady and then a wicked head cold (both now resolved). Neither helped me mentally or physically. Nor did learning, upon purchase of a new scale, that I have 12, not 10 poun...
March 10, 2010
As Republicans work to prevent a health-care bill from reaching President Obama, they are scrambling to exploit divisions between Democrats in the House and the Senate.
March 14, 2010
Instead of an epidemic of over-treatment, Warner describes an epidemic of under-treatment of children with mental illness.
March 9, 2010
The emergency department is always noisy, but sudden screams from a staffer still get attention. The triage nurse is yelling, "Not breathing, had vitals at triage and just croaked," as she runs toward us pushing a wheelchair. In it, a pale, thin man is slumped over and looking gray. I'm the atten...
March 9, 2010
When I was growing up, one of my mother's favorite admonitions -- along with "If you keep making that face, it's going to freeze that way" and "Don't sit too close to the television or you're going to need glasses" -- was the classic "Turn that music down, or you'll go deaf."
March 12, 2010
Linda Chase, right, and her mother, Jeanette Chase, 81, with Vanessa Bishop, a care consultant, at a nursing home in Reston, Va.
March 12, 2010
The Curious Cook columnist Harold McGee answers reader questions about healthful cooking.
March 12, 2010
The miss in prostate cancer follows a similar disappointment with Avastin in gastric cancer but success in ovarian cancer.
March 9, 2010
March 12, 2010
Speaker Nancy Pelosi spoke to reporters Thursday after a House Democratic caucus meeting.
March 2, 2010
With "meaningful use" on the mind of every HIMSS10 attendee, Mark Leavitt, MD, CCHIT chair, presented at an EHR Certification Town Hall.
March 2, 2010
David Blumenthal, MD, the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, surprised a packed hall of attendees Tuesday afternoon at HIMSS10 with the release of the notice of proposed rulemaking on certification. Blumenthal said he wasn't aware that the rule would be unveiled that day, but as hundreds gathered to hear the latest news from the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, he agreed the timing was right.
Feb. 18, 2010
The introduction of a medical check list for the iPhone could be a benefit to providers as mobile technology is quickly being integrated into the care process. Peter Waegemann, vice president of development for the mHealth Initiative, Inc. says so many health professionals have started using smartphones to help administer better care that some say they "don’t know how colleagues manage without them."
Feb. 16, 2010
Members of a federal health IT advisory group last week proposed to relax the number of measures that would be required for healthcare providers to demonstrate "meaningful use" of electronic health record systems. The Health and Human Service Department's meaningful use workgroup crafted an approach members said strike a "middle ground" between too few and too onerous a set of measures of meaningful use necessary to qualify providers for financial incentives under HHS's health IT adoption plan.
Feb. 12, 2010
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis announced Friday nearly $1 billion in grant awards for regional extension center, health information exchange and healthcare IT training. The funding comes from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and will go toward advancing healthcare IT, training workers for healthcare IT jobs and helping to make healthcare IT available to more than 100,000 healthcare providers, according to Sebelius.
Being underinsured means someone has inadequate health insurance coverage to address the financial expenses associated with health care services, resulting in financial strain, medical debt, or postponing needed care due to cost.
