Hays Anatomy

WASHINGTON, DC – U.S. Senator Pat Roberts (R-KS) and U.S. Senator Jerry Moran (R-KS) joined Senator Kay Baily Hutchinson (R-TX) in introducing a bill to halt implementation of Obamacare until the judicial review of the individual mandate is complete.

“Clearly the courts are going to continue to review Obamacare’s individual mandate, probably all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court,” Roberts said. “Given the ever growing number of problems and new costs associated with the law, it makes sense to suspend implementation immediately until we get a final resolution from the judicial review. Americans’ constitutional rights are at stake.”

“This week, another federal judge ruled that our Constitution prohibits the federal government from forcing Americans to purchase any good or service – including health care – as a condition of living in America,” Moran said. “Kansas is constitutionally prohibited from spending money it does not have, and should not be forced to make major budget decisions in this highly uncertain landscape. The Save our States Act provides certainty by delaying any implementation of the health care law until its constitutionality is determined by our nation’s highest court.”

The bill, the Save our States Act (SOS Act) would stop implementation of the new health care law until there is final resolution of the multi-state lawsuit on the individual mandate. The State of Kansas is a participant in the lawsuit.

Earlier this week, U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson declared the individual mandate and the entire law unconstitutional and in violation of the commerce clause.

Judge Vinson said, “While the individual mandate was clearly ‘necessary and essential’ to the act as drafted, it is not ‘necessary and essential’ to health care reform in general. Because the individual mandate is unconstitutional and not severable, the entire act must be declared void.”

The Department of Justice plans to appeal Vinson’s ruling to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Until a stay is granted by Judge Vinson’s court, the federal government may not force the states to comply with Obamacare.

Senator Roberts is a member of the Senate Finance Committee, the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee and is Co-Chairman of the Senate Rural Health Caucus. Senator Roberts has voted to repeal Obamacare.

When Senator Moran served in the U.S. House of Representatives, he was the first member to introduce legislation to repeal Obamacare in March 2010. Yesterday, he also voted to repeal the entire bill in the Senate, where he serves on the Senate Committee on Appropriations, the Senate Small Business Committee, and is a member of the Senate Rural Health Caucus.

Dr. Terry Pfannenstiel, Director of Outpatient Services at Pawnee Mental Health Services, Manhattan, recently was appointed to the Kansas Behavioral Sciences Regulatory Board. The BSRB is an eleven-member board established in 1980 to license and regulate psychologists and social workers in Kansas. Since that time, the authority of the BSRB has grown to include the regulation of professional counselors, masters psychologists, marriage and family therapists, and alcohol and other drug abuse counselors.

Pfannenstiel has been an employee of Pawnee Mental Health Services since 1982. He directs outpatient services across Pawnee’s ten-county area and sees patients in Pawnee’s Manhattan office. A former Hays resident, Dr. Pfannenstiel is the son of the late Edmund and Loretta Pfannenstiel. He is a graduate of St. Joseph’s Military Academy, Fort Hays State University, and Kansas State University.

Pawnee Mental Health Services is a licensed community mental health center and licensed substance abuse treatment center serving more than 7,500 people annually.

WASHINGTON, DC – U.S. Senator Pat Roberts today issued the following statement regarding the President’s renomination of Dr. Donald Berwick to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS):

“It is disappointing that despite Dr. Berwick’s six months on the job as head of CMS, he has appeared before the Finance Committee exactly once. One hearing is not enough to conduct adequate oversight of CMS, especially as it begins to implement changes and cuts called for in the new health care law. Serious questions remain about Dr. Berwick’s methods and beliefs. I am hopeful we will now be allowed the opportunity to get to know the man running the federal agency responsible for one third of all health care spending in America and the many new regulations pouring out of Health and Human Services.”

Senator Roberts is a member of the Senate Committee on Finance and the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. He voted against health insurance reform.

By  The Hutchinson News

The U.S. Attorney’s office and the Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General have opened an investigation into some Medicare billing at Promise Regional Medical Center – Hutchinson, the hospital revealed Tuesday in a news release.

The investigation involves the hospital’s hyperbaric oxygen therapy services.

The hospital’s board was made aware of a recent Medicare audit of billing in that department and the audit apparently triggered the investigation, according to the hospital.

“We don’t know much at this point, but we wanted the public to hear directly from us” Bruce Buchanan, board chair, said. “We certainly hope there is nothing to any of this.”

The board and staff will fully cooperate with the investigation, he said.

“We want to stress that the investigation does not involve patient care at the hospital,” Buchanan said. “It is focused on a billing issue.”

The hospital has engaged Gary Ayers, a partner with Foulston Siefkin LLP, a Wichita law firm, to conduct an internal investigation.

By KALEY CONNER

kconner@dailynews.net

A new cardiothoracic and vascular surgeon has been hired at Hays Medical Center. Dr. Elizabeth Ashworth began seeing patients about two weeks ago.

She comes to Hays from Indianapolis and will perform many types of heart procedures, including bypass and valve surgery, as well as lung surgeries.

Her goal in beginning a new practice is simple — providing the best medical care possible for northwest Kansas, she said.

“We have a huge responsibility because we provide medical care for essentially all of western Kansas,” Ashworth said. “And so the main goal is state-of-the-art surgical care and just taking extremely good care of our patients.”

Hays Med has been without an in-house surgeon since the death of Dr. Gary Benton in July. Local surgeries have been performed by several visiting surgeons for the past six months.

Ashworth, a native of Indiana, became acquainted with Benton while both were working as heart surgeons in Wichita in the early 1990s. She heard of the vacant position in Hays from several colleagues who urged her to apply, she said.

Ashworth attended medical school at Indiana University and completed a general surgery residency at Indiana University Medical Center. Her cardiothoracic surgery residency was completed at the Medical College of Wisconsin.

Ashworth has been busy since arriving in Hays. The hospital’s heart surgery program completed more than 500 cases last year, she said, noting she was impressed with the hospital’s DeBakey Heart Institute.

“Most people, if they look at a map, would not expect to find a DeBakey Heart Institute in Hays, Kansas,” she said. “But our cardiologists are wonderful, our physicians all are extremely supportive of our program. I’m very happy to be involved in it.”

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Jack LaLanne was prodding Americans to get off their couches and into the gym decades before it was cool. And he was still pumping iron and pushing fruits and vegetables decades past most Americans’ retirement age.

The fitness fanatic ate well and exercised – and made it his mission to make sure everyone did the same – right up to the end at age 96, friends and family said.

LaLanne died Sunday at his home in Morro Bay on California’s central coast, longtime agent Rick Hersh said. The cause was respiratory failure due to pneumonia.

“I have not only lost my husband and a great American icon, but the best friend and most loving partner anyone could ever hope for,” Elaine LaLanne, LaLanne’s wife of 51 years and a frequent partner in his television appearances, said in a written statement.

Lalanne, who had heart valve surgery two years ago, maintained a youthful physique and joked in 2006 that “I can’t afford to die. It would wreck my image.”
His workout show was a television staple from the 1950s to the ’70s. LaLanne and his dog Happy encouraged kids to wake their mothers and drag them in front of the television set. He developed exercises that used no special equipment, just a chair and a towel.

He also founded a chain of fitness studios that bore his name and in recent years touted the value of raw fruit and vegetables as he helped market a machine called Jack LaLanne’s Power Juicer.

When he turned 43 in 1957, he performed more than 1,000 push-ups in 23 minutes on the “You Asked For It” television show. At 60, he swam from Alcatraz Island to Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco – handcuffed, shackled and towing a boat. Ten years later, he performed a similar feat in Long Beach harbor.
LaLanne credited a sudden interest in fitness with transforming his life as a teen, and he worked tirelessly over the next eight decades to transform others’ lives, too.

“The only way you can hurt the body is not use it,” LaLanne said. “Inactivity is the killer and, remember, it’s never too late.”

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — The state hospital for developmentally disabled Kansans in Topeka would close in 2014 under Gov. Sam Brownback’s budget proposals.
The spending plan Brownback released Thursday assumes that the state begins reducing the population at the Kansas Neurological Institute on July 1. His administration is assuming $659,000 in savings in the hospital’s budget in the next fiscal year.
The institute has an average daily population of 142. Documents provided by Brownback’s office say it would take nearly two years to move all of the residents into community programs.
Kansas has one other state hospital for the developmentally disabled, in Parsons.
Some advocates for the disabled say they’re better served in community settings, living in home-like settings.

The Associated Press
TOPEKA – Just in time for people who are making New Year’s resolutions, the Kansas Department of Health and Environment is reminding smokers that it offers help if they want to quit.

The state is using the holiday to publicize the Kansas Tobacco Quitline, which hooks smokers up with coaches and links them to online exercises to help them stop smoking.
The line is 1-800-QUIT-NOW.

The program is funded by federal dollars.

The state also has about 500 two-week doses of nicotine gum and patches and will provide them while supplies last to Kansans who pass a brief medical exam and aren’t participating in Medicaid. That program already covers such therapies to help people quit.

By KALEY CONNER

kconner@dailynews.net

A new state law has changed the licensure requirements for addictions counselors, and not everyone is happy about it. A group of northwest Kansas counselors have launched an online petition to voice their concerns.

House Bill No. 2577, which was signed into law by Gov. Mark Parkinson in March, increases the educational requirements for licensure and places the field’s licensing authority in the hands of the Kansas Behavioral Sciences Regulatory Board. The changes are slated to take effect Aug. 1.

Opponents say they are not against more stringent requirements, but are concerned about how the changes could affect rural parts of the state. One of the main concerns cited in the petition is that the law shifts the responsibility of diagnosing substance abuse disorders from established professionals.

“It’s going to reduce the number of people in rural areas able to diagnose and it’s going to create barriers to accessing treatment in a timely manner,” said Richard Dunkin, a longtime addictions counselor who resides in Ellis. “We need to catch these people when they’re in crisis. If we lose that moment, they just get right back into their use.”

Addictions counselors are not authorized to make the final diagnosis. It’s the ability to make provisional diagnoses, however, that some counselors are afraid of losing, Dunkin said.

Under the current process, addictions counselors assess the client, make a provisional diagnosis and recommend a treatment plan. That recommendation then is sent to a state-contracted group for approval, he said.

The law states that only clinically licensed individuals can diagnose substance use disorders. Some counselors in northwest Kansas have expressed concern with this provision, noting that there is a shortage of clinical professionals in rural areas.

“Another problem that’s going to result from this is that treatment programs, who have already been facing funding cuts, are going to have to pay these clinical people an outrageous amount of money to come in and verify something we’re more than capable of doing,” Dunkin said, “that we’ve been doing for years.”

If treatment isn’t available quickly, there also is concern the legal system could become strained and the prison population could increase, he said.

The intent of changing the licensing process and requirements was to increase the “level of professionalism” and consumer confidence, said Sarah Hansen, executive director of the Kansas Association of Addiction Professionals.

The new licensing process also will provide clients with an opportunity for recourse if inappropriate conduct or treatment is observed in addictions counselors, she said.

The advocacy group was one of the partners responsible for introducing the bill. A grandfathering provision, which will allow currently licensed professionals to remain certified, is included in the new law.

“They’re our experts. They know how to do this work through experience and education. They’ve been doing this work already,” Hansen said. “The second piece is to say we know there is a shortage of addiction professionals throughout the state of Kansas.”

Hansen said she has heard from individuals concerned that the new law will take away professionals’ ability to diagnose.

“I meet that criticism very quickly with the response to say individuals with current AAPS credentials do not have the authority to diagnose substance abuse disorders today,” she said. “It does nothing in terms of taking away that ability.”

Under the current licensing process, requirements for a minimal level of CADC (addiction counselor certification) accreditation include a high school diploma or GED, plus documenting 60 clock-hours of education every two years and passing a national test.

The new standards require a baccalaureate degree with addictions-related coursework. Individuals currently licensed as psychologists, master social workers and licensed professional counselors or family therapists also qualify.

There will be two levels of certification — licensed addiction counselor and licensed clinical addiction counselor. Clinical counselors, who must have a master’s degree, will be able to diagnose and treat substance use disorders.

Opponents, however, say that academic credentials don’t mean everything — there is concern that some of the professionals now able to diagnose substance use disorders might not have adequate experience in the addictions field, said Steve Burd, an addictions counselor who works in Hays.

“They do not have the insight into the specific nature of addictions and have not had the personal and professional experience,” Burd said. “It could lead to people not being properly identified and incorrectly treated. That in itself is the most significant concern.”

Some rules and regulations for the new law still are being drafted. A 12th position has been added to the Behavioral Sciences and Regulatory Board to represent addictions counselors. Credentials currently are administered by the Kansas Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services.

The petition currently consists of more than 100 signatures, and organizers are hoping to add many more. They already have sent the document to some individuals helping to draft the rules and regulations in Topeka, Dunkin said.

The Associated Press
TOPEKA – The Kansas House will have a new Children and Families Committee when lawmakers open their annual session on Jan. 10.

Speaker Mike O’Neal says the new panel will review issues about child care and the placement of children with relatives or in foster care when there are allegations of abuse or neglect.

The committee’s chairman will be Olathe Republican Mike Kiegerl. The vice chairman will be Great Bend Republican Bill Wolf.

Kiegerl has served both on an Appropriations subcommittee on social service agency budgets and on the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Children’s Issues.