The Kansas Health Institute News Service sounded the alarm this week in reporting that the state hospitals in Larned and Osawatomie have had budget problems and operated recently at or over their licensed capacities — 465 and 176 beds, respectively. Osawatomie State Hospital had 32 admissions over the weekend. “We’re just out of money, basically,” Greg Valentine, superintendent at Osawatomie, told the KHI News Service. Full beds also mean 16-hour shifts for workers, who cover them for “comp time” because there is no money for overtime. Larned can’t afford to fill the 100 full-time jobs it has open. As our editorial today argues, before final adjournment, lawmakers need to work with the Kansas Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services to assess and meet the hospitals’ needs. They also need to factor in the state’s community mental health agencies, which recently have seen their funding cut under a new payment system; the governor’s 2009 budget left the centers $15.8 million short of what they say they need.
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Maybe they could a loan from Raytheon?
Cutting back on community services will only make the demands on the state hospital system greater.
Why doesent the Eagle take Sebelius to task on this? She did not add money in here budget for hospitals. Apparently it was not a priority for her. But the Eagle is quick to blame the legislature. If the Eagle wants to be a real paper then they need to be fair and balanced with their journalism.The buck starts and stops with the Sebelius. The legislature is in between.
The state is all too happy to let chruches and charities provide services for those they deinstitutionalized and tossed out into the community without the support they need to survive. I’m so tired of having to fight the state to not cut my client’s benefits. It’s so unbelievable how the state wants to ignore it’s most vulnerable citizens…after all the “squeaky wheel gets the grease” and those with severe and persistant mental illness don’t have the voice nor do they have what it takes to advocate for themselves. They get lost and not many people really care.
somehow the state did find 25 million for cessana and 5 million more for airtran yet cant fund the insustions?
I long for the day when people in Kansas will see that the disregard for the least of these my brethern, means a diminishing quality of life for us all.
Even if you all can’t see it - such is clearly the case: Our police can’t be therapists, our jails/prisons can’t be hospitals, our public libraries can’t be day treatment centers, our bridges can’t be housing resources, and the list goes on…
Call your representatives. I have. Our state can do better.
Some few decades ago, I went to visit my grandmother at the Osawatomie State Hospital; it was a hell-hole that made the one in Kesey’s “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” look positively civilized. I saw evidence of patients being routinely abused in ways that made Nazi POW camps look enjoyable, feces and urine dried on the floor and the sheetless beds and an atmosphere that stank of pain and hopelessness among other things! I’m told it was improved in recent years, but I don’t think such a system can be improved. It needs to be torn down.
The Supreme Court agreed and ordered that patients be released or returned to comunity facilities, but since such community facilities were never built or funded, most patients were simply tossed out and left to their own devices. Many ended up in jail, which was an improvement of sorts, since prisoners have at least some rights and a bare minimum of treatment available.
Our failure to deal with mental illness is a shame on our nation and will be until it is adequately addressed. It is long past time to act, and the longer we refuse to deal with it, the worse it will be. These people are our family members; they deserve better!
By STEVE LeBLANC, Associated Press Writer Sat Apr 12, 3:52 AM ET
BOSTON - “Two years after the state’s landmark health law was signed, the cracks are starting to show.
Costs are soaring and Massachusetts lawmakers are weighing a dollar-a-pack hike in the state’s cigarette tax to help pay for a larger-than-expected enrollment in the law’s subsidized insurance plans.”
Both Clinton and Obama want to do this to the entire country…..oh brother are we in trouble.
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