Month: February 2016

But House, Senate budgets would require legislative approval for such a move

by Megan Hart , KHI News Service

State officials said bills requiring legislative consent before the state could privatize Osawatomie State Hospital would take away one option to address long-standing staffing problems.

Tim Keck, interim secretary of the Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services, told members of the House Health and Human Services Committee on Monday that the department is working on a request for proposals related to public-private partnerships for the hospital. He said he expects both nonprofit and for-profit health care companies may apply.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services decertified Osawatomie in December, meaning the hospital no longer receives Medicare payments to care for people who have severe mental illnesses. The decertification costs Osawatomie about $1 million in lost payments each month, Keck said.

Kelly Ludlum, deputy secretary for KDADS, said a decision on whether to privatize would be separate from the effort to gain recertification from federal officials.

The House and Senate budgets passed last week include extra funds for Osawatomie to deal with the costs of recertification and to hire additional staff.

But the budget bills also include amendments requiring the governor’s office to get legislative approval before privatizing Osawatomie and Larned State Hospital. The two hospitals treat Kansans with mental health issues who are believed to be a danger to themselves or others.

Keck said KDADS hasn’t decided whether it will pursue privatization but would like guidance from an ad hoc committee and a consultant. The department also is seeking an exemption from state law requiring that the superintendent of Osawatomie be an unclassified civil servant, he said. An exemption would allow a private entity to bring in a superintendent who wouldn’t be a state employee.

“We need to have as many options as possible to do right by patients,” he said. “You’re taking an arrow out of our quiver” by limiting how the department could pursue privatization, Keck said.

Rep. Jim Ward, a Wichita Democrat, raised concerns that Osawatomie had been mismanaged in a deliberate attempt to push the facility toward privatization, an allegation Keck denied.

Rep. Scott Schwab, an Olathe Republican, said he rarely agreed with Ward, but he did understand concerns about privatization in this case.

“Is privatization a final, last resort or a priority?” he asked.

“Probably somewhere in between,” Keck responded.

Even if KDADS were to form a public-private partnership, it has a goal of keeping the hospital in place at Osawatomie, Keck said.

“I made a very strong commitment to Osawatomie,” he said.

Keck also updated the committee on recertification. A consultant conducted a mock inspection over three days last week to prepare the hospital for federal re-inspection, he said. The full report isn’t complete, but the consultant did raise concerns about training, adequate nurse staffing and some procedures.

KDADS also appealed the decertification in a separate procedure, Keck said, but facilities rarely win because they would have to prove federal inspectors were wrong on every point that led to the decertification.

The hospital has made progress on the safety issues that led to decertification, Keck said. Changes include screening patients for the risk they will act violently, training staff to use personal safety alarms and hiring six new security officers, he said.

KDADS also will ask for an additional $1.2 million to $2.4 million in funding, which would be enough to give direct care staff at Osawatomie a 5 percent or 10 percent raise, Keck said.

It also is pursuing other efforts to increase staff retention and lower the 35 percent staff vacancy rate, he said. Staffing levels aren’t allowed to fall below a certain level, and the state hospitals have been paying overtime and bringing in staff from contracting agencies.

“We can’t just get people in the door. We need to keep them in the door,” he said.

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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House, Senate committee leaders want state agencies to halt work

by Andy Marso, KHI News Service

Republican legislators who control energy-related House and Senate committees want to halt work on a plan to comply with federal climate change regulations now that the U.S. Supreme Court has put a temporary stay on the requirements.

But some of their colleagues say it would be prudent to keep preparing the plan in case the court ultimately rules against the state. And environmentalists say the state should move to reduce carbon emissions regardless of federal law.

Rep. Dennis Hedke, a Republican from Wichita and the chairman of the House Energy and Environment Committee, said during a Monday committee meeting that halting work on a state plan could save $1 million in each of the next two years.

He also lauded Jeff Chanay, the state’s chief deputy attorney general, for his work on the litigation that led to the Supreme Court stay.

“Thank you for the effort undertaken on behalf of the state of Kansas,” Hedke said. “I think you did a fantastic job.”

The regulation imposed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency seeks to reduce each state’s aggregate carbon emissions from power plants. Republican leaders in Kansas and other states have blasted the Clean Power Plan as unlawful federal overreach by President Barack Obama’s Democratic administration.

In October 2015, the Kansas Attorney General’s Office joined 26 other states in challenging the rule in federal court. Earlier that month, Kansas legislators grudgingly instructed the Kansas Department of Health and Environment to begin work on a state plan because if the state did not form one, it would have one imposed on it by the federal government. They also instructed the Kansas Corporation Commission, which regulates the state’s utilities, to analyze the costs of any plan.

After the Supreme Court stayed the regulation Feb. 9, Hedke said he and Sen. Rob Olson, a Republican from Olathe who chairs the Senate Utilities Committee, penned a joint letter to the state agencies requesting they stop their work.

Hedke said his committee also would soon take up Senate Bill 318, a bill Olson amended on the Senate floor to forbid work on a state plan while the stay is in effect.

Some legislators on both sides of the aisle asked whether the state needs to be better prepared if the stay is ended and the regulations are back in place.

Rep. Russ Jennings, a Republican from Lakin, asked Chanay if he thought legislators should include a “trigger mechanism” that would instruct agencies to resume their work if the stay is lifted while the Legislature is not in session.

Rep. John Carmichael, a Democrat from Wichita, said after the hearing that the death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia just days after the stay was imposed could change the legal landscape. The court voted 5-4 to put the EPA rule on hold while it’s being litigated.

“Should the issue be passed to the Supreme Court again in the absence of Justice Scalia, one might expect a difference outcome,” Carmichael said.

Rep. Tom Moxley, a Republican from Council Grove, said utility companies that would be most affected have told him they would like the state to pursue parallel tracks: continue litigating while also preparing a state compliance plan in case the litigation fails.

“The utilities think we should stay engaged,” Moxley said.

Moxley also said something as consequential as the Obama climate plan should have been subject to a vote in Congress. Its imposition through regulation instead of law was a symptom of a standoff between the Obama administration and Congress that has been bad for the nation, he said.

Legislators on both sides of the issue asked pointed questions about the costs that KDHE and the KCC have incurred while forming a plan to comply with the regulation versus the resources the Kansas attorney general’s office has spent fighting it.

Zack Pistora, a lobbyist for the Kansas Sierra Club, said those costs are minimal compared to the environmental and public health costs of ignoring climate change, especially in an agriculture state with an economy sensitive to weather patterns and climate trends.

Pistora said 25 weather events have affected Kansas since 2010 that cost $1 billion or more in combined losses to states. The state should be seeking to curb carbon emissions regardless of federal regulation, he said.

“While it’s important the Supreme Court carefully reviews the constitutional viability of the law, let’s not lose sight of the pressing need of why we ought to change our energy systems,” Pistora said. “It’s because burning fossils fuels are largely causing our carbon pollution, and it’s drastically changing our global climate.”

Olson and Hedke have both said publicly that they don’t believe human activity is affecting the earth’s climate.

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.

– See more at http://www.khi.org/news/article/kansas-climate-change-plan-in-limbo-after-supreme-court-ruling#sthash.FI9gOh2V.dpuf