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A 21-year-old Kansas City, Kan., man was arrested at 8:54 p.m. Dec. 29 in Saline County, Mo., according to Missouri Highway Patrol reports.
He was held in the Saline County Jail on two warrants out of Bates County, Mo.; and charges of no valid driver’s license; speeding; and failing to drive on the right half of the roadway, according to the arrest report.
An Arizona company has been ordered to refund consumers who request reimbursement and pay $10,000 in penalties and fees for deceiving Kansans into purchasing household products under the guise that the company’s proceeds went to support a charitable purpose, Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt said today.
American Handicapped and Disadvantaged Workers Inc., of Phoenix, and its president and CEO Adli Najib Dasuqi of Waterford, Mich., admitted to calling Kansas consumers and attempting to sell them various household goods, including light bulbs, trash bags, kitchen scissors and cleaning products. The telemarketers falsely exaggerated the nature of the business, misleading consumers to believe the company was a charity or had a charitable purpose. The prices the company charged for these products grossly exceeded the market price for similar products.
Under terms of a consent judgment approved by the Shawnee County District Court, the company also agreed to refund Kansas consumers who request refunds and will not collect on any monies still owed by Kansas consumers. Any Kansan who may have done business with the company should file a complaint with the attorney general’s Consumer Protection Division online at www.InYourCornerKansas.org or by calling 800-432-2310.
Schmidt also advised consumers who wish to support a charity to do their homework before giving.
“Make decisions about what charities to support on your own schedule instead of responding to a telephone solicitor,” Schmidt said. “If you do get a call that sounds like something you are interested in supporting, ask the caller to mail you information in writing so you can check out the charity before giving. Never be pressured into making a contribution over the phone.”
For more safe giving tips, visit the attorney general’s consumer protection website at www.InYourCornerKansas.org. A copy of the consent judgment is available here: http://1.usa.gov/1PxhJd4 .
Officials say privatization among options considered to address continuing problems
by Jim McLean, KHI News Service
State officials have not decided whether to seek federal recertification of the Osawatomie State Hospital for Kansans with mental illness.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services decertified the hospital earlier this month because of the state’s failure to address security and safety issues cited by federal inspectors, who concluded the sexual assault of a hospital worker by a patient in October was due in part to lax security.
Decertification is expected to cost the hospital approximately $1 million a month in Medicare reimbursements and other federal payments.
Even so, Kari Bruffett, secretary of the Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services, told members of a legislative oversight committee Tuesday that there are issues to consider before deciding whether to pursue recertification.
“Part of the question for the agency, the administration, legislators and policymakers is what is the trade-off for the bed capacity versus the funding that comes with certification,” Bruffett said.
Renovations prompted by an earlier federal inspection have reduced the hospital’s capacity by 60 at a time when in-patient psychiatric beds are in short supply across the state. Recertification would require additional renovations, which Bruffett said would force the state to continue limiting admissions.
The hospital is licensed for 206 beds, but the renovations have reduced its capacity to 146 beds. Osawatomie is one of two state-run inpatient treatment facilities for Kansans with severe and persistent mental illness. The other is in Larned.
Recertification also would require the state to administratively separate the portion of Osawatomie hospital in which Medicare patients would be treated from the rest of the facility and to maintain separate nursing staffs. That could be difficult, Bruffett said, given the problems officials have staffing the existing facility.
“It’s very difficult (to recruit staff) in an area that’s close to the Kansas City metro area,” Bruffett said, explaining that the state often can’t match the salaries offered by private hospitals. “Absolutely, that ability to compete on salary is part of the issue.”
The cost of maintaining separate nursing staffs is another consideration, she said.
“It isn’t about providing more care, it’s about meeting an administrative requirement to have separate nursing staff,” Bruffett said.
Rep. Jim Ward, a Wichita Democrat and member of the joint legislative committee charged with overseeing KanCare, the state’s privatized Medicaid program, criticized Bruffett and other state officials for failing to address longstanding problems at Osawatomie that led to decertification.
“The (federal) findings say there’s been a systemic failure at the hospital to provide basic services,” Ward said. “That’s shameful, and it should be fixed.”
Privatizing some or all of the hospital’s services is among the options being considered, Bruffett said. She said finding a private partner to help maintain and operate the psychiatric hospital could be a way to fund needed improvements.
“Any discussion of privatizing some or all of the hospital’s services, beds or whatever has to be tied to an increase in investment,” Bruffett said. “We’ve looked at other states where they’ve worked with private partners and got new hospital construction as part of the deal.”
The question of whether to pursue recertification has added urgency to the privatization discussions, said Bruffett, who is in her last days as KDADS secretary. She will start work in 2016 as director of policy for the Kansas Health Institute, parent organization of the editorially independent KHI News Service.
The nonprofit KHI News Service is an editorially independent initiative of the Kansas Health Institute and a partner in the Heartland Health Monitor reporting collaboration. All stories and photos may be republished at no cost with proper attribution and a link back to KHI.org when a story is reposted online.
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