KANSAS CITY – Preparing false income tax returns in the names of prison inmates was one of the schemes a Kansas City tax preparer used to defraud the Internal Revenue Service of more than $400,000, according to U.S. Attorney Barry Grissom.

Prayshana Washington, 28, Kansas City, Kan., pleaded guilty to one count of preparing false income tax returns and one count of aggravated identity theft. In her plea, she admitted that from 2012 to 2015 she was in the business of preparing individual income tax returns for clients, who generally paid between $500 and $1,000 for her services. She admitted:

Preparing a 2012 return for a client that included false claims about dependents, false household help income, and false American Opportunity Credits.
Directing the IRS to deposit fraudulent returns onto prepaid debit cards and mail them to addresses she controlled.
Obtaining names, dates of birth and Social Security numbers for prison inmates and preparing fraudulent income tax returns in their names.

Sentencing will be set for a later date. The parties have agreed to recommend a sentence of 37 months in federal prison. Grissom commended the Internal Revenue Service, Assistant U.S. Attorney Scott Rask and Matthew Kluge, Trial Attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice, Tax Division, for their work on the case.

By DAVE RANNEY & JIM MCLEAN

Roughly 1,000 Kansas doctors soon will be participating in a massive nationwide initiative aimed at improving the quality and efficiency of the health care system.

The Kansas doctors will be part of a six-state transformation project managed by the Iowa Healthcare Collaborative, a nonprofit organization formed in 2004 by doctors and hospitals in the state.

Dr. Tom Evans, the CEO of the Iowa collaborative, said each of the participating states will be free to focus on its own improvement strategy.

“We’ll be the main contractor, but we believe state strategies need to be freestanding,” Evans said. “Kansas’ strategies need to be about Kansas, Nebraska’s need to be about Nebraska and so on.”

Georgia, Oklahoma and South Dakota are the other states participating in what has been named the Compass Practice Transformation Network. It’s one of 39 collaborative groups selected to be part of a $685 million campaign announced Tuesday by the Obama administration to transform the fee-for-service system into a performance-based system that rewards quality over volume.

The Compass Practice Transformation Network will be funded by a four-year innovation grant of $32.5 million from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

“This is the first step in what’s going to be a long transition, going from a strictly fee for service-based payment methodology to one that’s more performance-based,” said Jerry Slaughter, executive director of the Kansas Medical Society. “It’s unprecedented. It’s going to change how everybody in the health care system is going to be paid in the future.”

Groups of participating Kansas doctors will be assigned coaches to help them develop better ways of managing patients with chronic diseases, such as diabetes. The coaches will use data from electronic health records to identify high-need and high-cost patients and then work with doctors to develop more effective and efficient treatment protocols.

“Historically, the thesis statement has always been, ‘If we can get (patients) to a doctor or to the hospital, they’ll be better,” Evans said. “But that’s not the case. There are tons of studies that show that access to health care improves a patient’s health, but it doesn’t necessarily fix it. And there are a whole bunch of people who just fall through the cracks.”

Those studies, said Kendra Tinsley, executive director of the Kansas Healthcare Collaborative, demonstrate that “more care is not necessarily better care.”

Tinsley’s organization, which was formed in 2008 by the medical society and the Kansas Hospital Association based on the Iowa model, will lead Kansas’ participation in what federal officials are calling the Transforming Clinical Practice Initiative.

Tom Bell, president and CEO of the hospital association, said the Affordable Care Act may still be controversial but it’s not practical to turn back the clock on the changes it has and continues to make in the health care system.

“It makes no difference who’s in the White House or who’s in control in Topeka or who controls Congress or the state Legislature,” Bell said. “This stuff is going to happen. As they say, the train has left the station.”

Dave Ranney is a reporter for KHI News Service in Topeka, a partner in the Heartland Health Monitor team.

Jim McLean is executive editor of KHI News Service in Topeka, a partner in the Heartland Health Monitor team.

TOPEKA – When the U.S. Supreme Court begins its annual term this week, it will hear oral arguments in three Kansas capital murder cases.

On October 7, the high court will hear the State’s appeals in Kansas v. Reginald Carr, Kansas v. Jonathan Carr, and Kansas v. Sidney Gleason. The Carr cases arise from murders in Sedgwick County in December 2000 and the Gleason case from murders in Barton County in February 2004.

In each of the three cases, the Kansas Supreme Court upheld the defendant’s guilt but overturned the death sentences that had been recommended by the jury and imposed by the trial court. Kansas appealed, and in March the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review the Kansas Supreme Court’s decisions.

The U.S. Supreme Court has ordered oral argument on two separate constitutional questions. At 10 a.m., Attorney General Derek Schmidt will argue that the instructions given to the juries did not violate the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, an issue present in all three cases. At 11 a.m., Solicitor General Steve McAllister will argue that conducting a joint sentencing proceeding for the two Carr defendants did not violate the Eighth Amendment.

Kansas last participated in oral argument at the U.S. Supreme Court in January, when it successfully argued that state antitrust laws were not preempted by federal law and could be applied to alleged price-fixing in the natural gas marketplace.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Attorneys for Kansas school districts suing the state over its school funding formula have asked the Kansas Supreme Court to lift a stay on a lower court ruling, but the state responded that the lower court failed to properly evaluate the case.

The Topeka Capital-Journal reports a three-judge panel found the state’s newly enacted strategy for financing 285 school districts and cuts to low-income districts were unconstitutional. Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt responded by asking the Supreme Court for a stay while he pursued an appeal, which the court granted.

Attorney Alan Rupe argued the state is refusing to comply with its constitutional obligations, but Schmidt noted that performance of Kansas students in reading and math is solid, despite “doomsday hyperbole” by the plaintiffs.