State of Kansas mental health facilities and have seen a rough year under Governor Sam Brownback. Continued budget cuts and problems with overcrowding left facilities like Osawatomie overwhelmed, forcing many employees to work repeated double and triple shifts in order to keep the facility within operating requirements.
http://www.khi.org/news/2014/aug/18/kansas-mental-health-system-under-increasing-stres/
With the patient count so high, many of the hospital’s direct-care staff were pressed into working one, two and sometimes three overtime shifts a week.
“The place is over census and understaffed,” said Rebecca Proctor, executive director at the Kansas Organization of State Employees, a labor union that represents many state hospital front-line workers. “Conditions there are really, really bad.”
Angela de Rocha, a spokesperson for Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services, confirmed that the Osawatomie hospital’s patient count on July 15 was “an overall high for the past 10 years.”
On Friday, the The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services informed the state of Kansas it will cease sending federal funds to the facility. Citing failure to meet compliance standards funding for new patients will end today, December 21, at the end of business day.
In a legal notice published into the Osawatomie Paper, the case is made clear:
http://www.graphic-online.com/classifieds/community/other/legal_notices/ad_17601e00-0a39-56a2-bbf1-2d7b3b835b9f.html
Published in the
Osawatomie Graphic,
December 16, 2015)
PUBLIC NOTICE
Notice is hereby given that the agreement between the Secretary of Health and Human Services and Osawatomie State Hospital, located at 500 State Hospital Drive in Osawatomie, Kansas, as a provider of hospital services in the Health Insurance for the Aged and Disabled Program (Medicare) is to be terminated at the close of December 21, 2015.
Osawatomie State Hospital does not comply with Section 1861 of the Social Security Act which requires a hospital to provide services which are sufficient to meet the needs of its patients. Non-compliance was established during a survey completed on November 3, 2015.
The Medicare program will not make payment for hospital services furnished to inpatients admitted after the close of December 21, 2015. For inpatients admitted after December 21, 2015 or before, payment may continue for up to 30 days of inpatient hospital services furnished after termination. Payment will not be made for services furnished to outpatients after January 20, 2016.
Victoria Vachon
Branch Manager
Non-Long Term
Care Branch
Kansas City Regional
Office
The state of Kansas had been working to meet the federal requirements, but the standard of care within the facility has been under tight scrutiny after a patient, Brandon Brown, was released following short term care from the overcrowded facility. Within days of release, Brandon Brown beat Jerry Martinez, a 61 year old man, to death in an altercation that many, including Brown’s father, believed related to lack of proper care in Osawatomie.
Brandon Brown had been party to at least two altercations during his week long stay at Osawatomie, and had been cited as belligerent and combative. By the end of his week long stay, though, care providers believed he had shown such a complete turn around that his release put him back on the streets, where he proceeded to end the life of a local resident.
Mental health advocates tell us it is impossible to know if issues of care resulted in this outcome, as many factors are at play in a release. The fact that workers are over-worked and under-paid, however, is not in question.
In an August interview, Rebecca Proctor, director of Kansas Organization of State Employees informed me, “This kind of staffing is dangerous, not just for staff but patients too. People cannot work nonstop safely.”
Today, December 21, will make the last day patients can be admitted to Osawatomie care services and receive federal Medicare supports.
The state of Kansas has two mental health treatment facilities for it’s 2.9 Million residents. Larned State Hospital, which has served western Kansas, is not named for failure to provide services by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Larned Hospital was in the news last winter, when, due to lack of bed space they were unable to accept an mental health patient who waited in Dodge City, Kansas jail through the holidays. That patient, Rickey Schweitzer, committed suicide before mental health housing could be arranged for him despite his nearly 2 month stay in county jail facilities.
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