By Dave Ranney
KHI News Service

TOPEKA — A spokesman for the Kansas Department of Health and Environment said he expects the agency’s computer system to be fully compatible with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services system by Aug. 15.

KDHE Chief Information Officer Glen Yancey shared the prediction Monday in a letter sent to CMS headquarters in Baltimore.
The letter was in response to CMS officials last month directing officials in six states, including Kansas, to submit plans for correcting delays in determining eligibility in their respective Medicaid programs, primarily for pregnant women, children, and people with disabilities.

The six states were Kansas, Alaska, California, Michigan, Missouri and Tennessee.

“Our response was that we’re moving forward and we’re going to make sure this gets fixed,” said Sara Belfry, a spokesperson for KDHE.

Several news outlets characterized the CMS letters as “demands” that the six states address months-long delays in the processes for determining eligibility.

But Kansas’ troubles, Belfry said, have more to do with difficulties in sharing information with CMS computers than with processing applications.
“We kind of got lumped in with the other states because the letters all went at the same time,” Belfry said. “We don’t have a backlog in applications.”
In the initial letter, CMS Director Cindy Mann wrote that while Kansas appeared to be in compliance or near-compliance with six of the seven “critical success factors” for ensuring implementation of the Affordable Care Act, it “still does not have the ability to send or receive account transfers from the FFM (federally facilitated marketplace), which interferes with Kansas’ residents’ ability to apply and enroll in Medicaid.”

Most of the shortcomings, Belfry said, are tied to ongoing efforts to redesign the Kansas Eligibility and Enforcement System (KEES), the software package used to calculate Medicaid eligibility, gather and share data, and let enrollees know if they are eligible for other benefits.

Earlier, KDHE officials predicted KEES would be up and running by October 2013. The rollout was later pushed back to March or April 2014. It’s now Aug. 15.

Advocates for uninsured and underinsured Kansans on Tuesday said they had not heard any reports of Medicaid applications being stuck in the state’s system for determining eligibility.

“When the stories about the CMS letter came out last week, we used our social media to ask if this was a problem,” said Sean Gatewood, director of the Kansas Medicaid Access Coalition. “We didn’t hear back from anybody.”

KDHE last month announced that enrollment in the state’s Medicaid program had reached a historic high of 426,642 people in April. That’s a 30,300-person increase over the previous year.

WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — Family members of a woman killed by a teenager who drove the wrong way on a Kansas highway say more should have been done to keep him off the road after he told deputies he had taken LSD.

Two women and 16-year-old Dominic Stolfi were killed in the collision Sunday morning on Kansas 254, hours after Stolfi said he had taken the hallucinogenic drug.

Butler County Sheriff Kelly Herzet says deputies didn’t have grounds to arrest the boy. His 16-year-old friend, who also allegedly took LSD, was taken by ambulance to a hospital, while Dominic’s father took him home.

The Wichita Eagle reports Dominic later drove the family’s Ford Explorer into a collision with a car driven by 27-year-old Lisa Hardy, killing her and her 52-year-old passenger, Nancy Ross.

WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — Wichita State University says it has formed a partnership with an engineering services company from India that it hopes will eventually create new jobs and avoid big layoffs in the aerospace industry.

John Tomblin is the director of the National Institute for Aviation Research at Wichita State. He told The Wichita Eagle  that the agreement with global information technology firm Tech Mahindra is unusual.

Under the agreement, the company will work with WSU and NIAR on projects and train new engineers for aerospace and the automotive industries.

The engineers the company helpes train at Wichita State University will live in Wichita and work for Tech Mahindra on projects for local companies in composite materials manufacturing, advanced materials, aircraft certification, and structural testing.

BURLINGTON, Kan. (AP) — A Kansas House of Representatives candidate says his arrest on suspicion of having an open container of alcohol and traffic violations was a mistake.

Burlington Police Chief Doug Jones said Jeff Freeman, a Republican running against incumbent state Rep. Peggy Mast of Emporia in the Aug. 5 primary, was booked into the Coffey County jail Sunday.

Freeman said Wednesday he was stopped after not signaling a turn at a stop sign. He contends he had no alcohol in his car.

He says he had some alcohol at a memorial service in Neosho Falls earlier in the day but said he was sober when he was stopped.

Freeman called the arrest a distraction from the important issues of the campaign and said he would stay in the race.

GREAT BEND, Kan. (AP) — The first-degree murder trial of a central Kansas man has been delayed until the suspect undergoes a mental health evaluation.

No new date has been set for the trial of Jeffery Wade Chapman after a hearing Monday on the defense motion seeking the evaluation. Chapman’s attorney said in a court motion that Chapman was experiencing hallucinations while jailed in Barton County.

Chapman is charged with killing 25-year-old Damon Galyardt, whose body was discovered southwest of Great Bend in November 2011.

A new trial date will be set after Chapman undergoes the evaluation at Larned State Hospital’s forensic unit.