FORT RILEY -More than 300 Second Armored Brigade Combat Team members returned home Sunday from the Central Command Area of Responsibility in the Middle East.

The soldiers deployed last September.

While deployed, the “Dagger” brigade assumed responsibility of the theater security cooperation and partnership mission within CENTCOM.

Through bilateral exercises and training exchanges, Dagger Soldiers displayed commitment in increasing partner capacity while fostering professional and personal relationships in the region to reaffirm support for long-term sustainment of security and stability in the region.

All of the Second Armored Brigade Combat Team members are due back at Fort Riley by the end of July.

WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — Authorities have found a body downstream from where they’d been searching for a missing 11-year-old boy who fell into a Kansas creek.

The Wichita Eagle reports that Wichita police Deputy Chief Hassan Ramzah says the body was found Saturday by a kayaker. Ramzah couldn’t confirm the identity of the body, other than to say it was a male.

Officials say Devon Dean Cooley fell into Gypsum Creek on May 27. Crews have continued searching for the boy, and say the unidentified body was found about a mile downstream from the search area.

Cooley’s family issued a statement late Saturday saying they believe the body to be Devon’s but also acknowledging the absence of official confirmation.

Police say the body likely won’t be identified until a coroner’s investigation is completed.

SHAWNEE COUNTY – One person was injured in an accident just before 4p.m. on Sunday in Shawnee County.

The Kansas Highway Patrol reported a 2013 Volkswagen driven by William T Selesky, 42, Bolivar, CA., was eastbound on Interstate 70 one mile east of Valencia.

The vehicle hit the median then crashed into a deep ravine creek.

Selesky suffered a possible medical condition and was transported to Stormont Vail.

He was properly restrained at the time of the accident, according to the KHP.

MELISSA HELLMANN, Associated Press

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Funding designed to keep Kansas seniors out of nursing homes by offering in-home services such as cooking and cleaning is set to be cut as the state deals with a budget shortfall.

Some advocates for seniors worry that the 30 percent reduction to the Senior Care Act program will affect more than 4,500 elderly Kansans.

A spokeswoman for the state Department of Aging and Disability Services says family and community members will help seniors whose services are reduced or eliminated.

Opponents say the move will drive elderly people into nursing homes and onto Medicaid, which will cost the state more money in the long run.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas Democratic lawmakers say they’ve been circulating a petition to force a special legislative session to address the school funding.

The move comes after the Kansas Supreme Court rejected the Legislature’s latest attempt to enact a constitutionally equitable school funding system. The high court has meanwhile kept a June 30 deadline for lawmakers, raising the possibility that schools could close if the date passes without further legislative action.

The Topeka Capital-Journal reports that House Minority Leader Tom Burroughs and Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley said in a letter sent Saturday evening to Gov. Sam Brownback that they’ve begun collecting signatures to force the governor to call a special session to find a solution to “equitably fund Kansas schools.”

Brownback’s office hasn’t given any indication of its plans.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — A 38-year-old Topeka man whose 4-year-old son was severely injured when explosives detonated in his car is scheduled to enter a plea in the case.

Jacob Daniel Schell is scheduled to enter a plea on July 8 in Shawnee County court, where he faces several charges, including aggravated battery of a child, aggravated endangering of a child and criminal use of explosives. Details of the plea weren’t available.

The Topeka Capital-Journal reports Schell’s son was injured when a sack containing explosives blew up in his lap, severely injuring the child.

The incident occurred July 5, 2015, as Schell was driving. The explosion also peeled back the metal roof of the large car.

By MEGAN HART

Rural hospitals nationwide are facing a host of financial challenges, but states can still take action to keep them open, the head of a rural health group told the Governor’s Rural Health Working Group on Wednesday in Topeka.

Alan Morgan, CEO of the National Rural Health Association, said people in urban areas have a few explanations for why rural hospitals are struggling: irreversible population decline in rural areas, low-quality care and bad management practices.

In fact, he said, rural population across the nation appears to be stabilizing, rural hospitals do as well as or better than urban hospitals on quality measures, and insurance companies have struggled with the economics of serving rural populations.

However, he said, that doesn’t mean the problems of rural hospitals are an urban exaggeration. If hospitals continue to close at the current rate, about one in four rural hospitals will close in the next 10 years, Morgan said. A study released earlier this year by the NRHA and iVantage found that 673 U.S. hospitals, including 29 in Kansas, were at risk of closing in the next decade.

Gov. Sam Brownback announced formation of the working group in January to address the challenges of health care delivery in rural Kansas.

Part of the challenge is that rural residents tend to have more health problems than people who live in urban areas, Morgan said, and rural communities have been hit especially hard by increases in opioid abuse and other behavioral health issues. That translates into a disproportionate number of patients who can’t afford preventive care and use the emergency room for treatment, he said.

“We have a low-income population with great health needs,” he said.

Since 2010, hospitals also have been hit with a series of financial blows, including federal budget cuts associated with sequestration, reduced Medicare reimbursements under the Affordable Care Act and a shift toward outpatient care, Morgan said.

Until that time, most rural hospitals operated with from roughly a 2 percent profit to a 2 percent loss, he said. Now, the average is closer to running in the red by 6 percent.

Rural hospitals also disproportionately suffer from difficulty recruiting health care providers, and many are burdened by debts or old facilities that aren’t well-suited to providing the outpatient care that people use more often now, Morgan said.

“These hospitals are still structured like they were in the 1940s,” he said.

States and communities are exploring ideas to stabilize rural hospitals, Morgan said. No one has found a silver bullet to solve the problem, but he said some show promise. These include efforts to:

·       Set up programs to encourage rural teens to pursue health care as a career. Providers who grew up in rural areas and do a residency there are more likely to stay.

·       Expand the roles of people without a medical degree, such as paramedics, patient navigators and community workers who provide health information.

·       Allow nurse practitioners, physician assistants and dental therapists to practice more independently, with a physician or dentist on call.

·       Evaluate what services a community needs from its hospital.

·       Increase the use of telemedicine to support rural providers.

·       Offer grants to help hospitals cross the “shaky bridge” between payment models.

The one thing states shouldn’t do is wait for the federal government to come up with a model based on what works in urban areas, Morgan said.

Lt. Gov. Jeff Colyer, who leads the nine-member work group, said some of the ideas Morgan brought already are moving forward in parts of Kansas. The key will be rewarding successful initiatives and finding “blockages” in the system that prevent innovation, he said.

“Kansas is actually a pretty innovative place itself,” Colyer said.

Megan Hart is a reporter for KHI News Service in Topeka, a partner in the Heartland Health Monitor team. You can reach her on Twitter @meganhartMC