KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Authorities are searching for an offender who escaped from a minimum-security prison in Kansas City.

The Missouri Department of Corrections announced Monday in a news release that Brian Deconink scaled the roof of the Kansas City Reentry Center’s main building Sunday during outside recreation. The release said he had help from another offender.

The center houses inmates nearing parole; Deconink was set to be paroled in March.

Authorities say Deconink was serving a five-year sentence for possession of a controlled substance in a correctional center from DeKalb County. He has past convictions for burglary, stealing, robbery and resisting arrest.

Authorities are investigating the escape from the center. It was a hallway house before it was converted last year to a minimum-security prison.

DETROIT (AP) — U.S. safety regulators are investigating whether a recall of Ford F-150 pickup trucks for brake failures should be expanded to more model years.

The probe covers about 282,000 pickups with 3.5-liter six-cylinder engines from 2015 and 2016. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says it has received 25 complaints alleging sudden brake loss in the trucks. No injuries were reported.

In May, Ford recalled about 271,000 six-cylinder F-150s from 2013 and 2014 because brake fluid could leak from the master cylinder and cause brake failure.

The safety agency says it received 10 complaints about 2015 brake failures and another 15 about the 2016 models.

Investigators will decide if the 2015 and 2016 models should be added to the recall. The F-series pickup is the top-selling vehicle in the U.S.

By ANDY MARSO

A nursing home chain’s lawsuit over the Kansas Medicaid application backlog hinges on whether state officials are doing enough to electronically verify applicants’ assets.

The Evangelical Lutheran Good Samaritan Society, a South Dakota-based nonprofit that operates 32 long-term care facilities in Kansas, filed the suit last week in federal court. The suit was filed on behalf of 21 nursing home residents waiting on eligibility determinations for Medicaid, which in Kansas is a managed care program known as KanCare.

The complaint alleges that the Kansas Department of Health and Environment violated federal law by failing to use an electronic asset verification program, or AVP, to quickly determine whether the residents were eligible for Medicaid.

“The defendant did not seek to obtain any of the Plaintiffs’ information electronically via AVP,” the complaints say. “Nor did the defendant try to obtain the Plaintiffs’ information from secondary sources. Instead the Defendant placed the burden of providing information entirely on the Plaintiffs.”

KHI News Service has requested information from the state about its asset verification program and is awaiting a response.

The suit cites a law Congress passed in 2008 requiring states to implement electronic asset verification for Medicaid applications, as well as a federal law that requires states to process applications within 45 days.

For about a year Kansas officials have been grappling with thousands of Medicaid applications that have passed the 45-day mark. The backlog started last summer with the rocky rollout of a new computer program for processing applications known as the Kansas Eligibility Enforcement System, or KEES.

The backlog burgeoned at the end of 2015 when the state funneled all applications — including some that were previously processed by the Department for Children and Families — through a single facility known as the KanCare Clearinghouse.

That change came just as the open enrollment period for the federal Affordable Care Act directed far more online applicants to Medicaid than expected.

By May the state had almost 11,000 applications waiting 45 days or more.

Uncompensated care

In Kansas, Medicaid primarily covers children, pregnant women, Kansans with disabilities or seniors who otherwise couldn’t afford nursing home care.

Complaints from groups that serve those populations spurred a state audit and led the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to request twice-monthly updates on the backlog and the state’s efforts to resolve it.

Leaders of nursing homes and groups that represent them have said that the backlog was hurting them financially because most Kansans rely on Medicaid to pay for long-term care after their personal assets run out.

In the lawsuit, the Evangelical Lutheran Good Samaritan Society said the 21 named plaintiffs have a variety of serious medical conditions and that Good Samaritan Society officials have provided a total of $838,555.18 in uncompensated care while they wait for the residents’ Medicaid applications to clear. According to its most recent available tax forms, the Evangelical Lutheran Good Samaritan Society, which operates nationwide, had about $750 million in net assets in 2014.

The suit requests that a federal judge order Kansas to “automatically approve the Plaintiffs’ Medicaid benefits.”

Rachel Monger, director of government affairs for LeadingAge Kansas, said the Good Samaritan Society homes are part of her organization, but LeadingAge Kansas had no knowledge of the lawsuit before it was filed.

Mark Dickerson, senior director of communications for the Evangelical Lutheran Good Samaritan Society, said the group filed suit because “Kansas’ failure to follow federal regulation and timelines in regard to the processing of Medicaid applications has jeopardized the reimbursement that some of our residents are entitled to receive.”

“In this action we are fighting for the rights of our residents while also attempting to receive payment for services already rendered,” Dickerson said.

Dickerson said he couldn’t recall his organization, which operates in 24 states, filing a similar lawsuit anywhere else.

Some find the fast track

Other nursing homes across Kansas reporting similar financial losses have succeeded in getting their residents Medicaid coverage after filing administrative appeals or taking their grievances to legislators or the media.

Amy Turgon, director of accounting for a Shawnee assisted living facility named Sharon Lane, said via email that the facility’s situation improved dramatically after her struggles to get Medicaid coverage for residents were publicized.

“We were able to get 17 Medicaid applications processed and approved in two weeks,” Turgon said. “That is unprecedented.  We were given a supervisor at KDHE to manage our cases and ensure they were resolved.”

Molly Wood, a Lawrence attorney who specializes in elder care law, said she envisioned a similar resolution to the Good Samaritan Society’s lawsuit.

Wood said the suit’s plaintiff list was impressive, but it would be hard to prove harm to the plaintiffs because federal law prohibits assisted living facilities from involuntarily discharging residents for lack of Medicaid payments. And the state can make the whole case moot by pushing those 21 applications to the top of the stack and getting them processed.

State officials promised assisted living facilities a process to apply for half-payments for residents with pending Medicaid applications but never implemented it. Instead, they have used the requests to fast-track those residents’ applications.

The state also deployed extra staff at Maximus and KDHE to process applications and shifted about 30 DCF workers to process them.

Those efforts pushed the number of applications waiting 45 days or more down to 1,512 by the end of August.

State officials say they can eliminate the backlog before the next ACA open enrollment begins Nov. 1.

Andy Marso is a reporter for KHI News Service in Topeka, a partner in the Heartland Health Monitor team. You can reach him on Twitter @andymarso

 

KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) — The University of St. Mary is mourning the death of former basketball player Marcus Mondaine.

The Kansas City Star reports that Mondaine was found fatally shot Saturday in a Kansas City, Missouri, house. An arrest warrant has been issued for a person of interest.

Mondaine was finishing his final semester at the private liberal arts university in Leavenworth. Before his last season ended this spring, he was twice been named the Kansas Collegiate Athletic Conference Men’s Basketball Defensive Player of the Week. He also played for State Fair Community College in Sedalia, Missouri, and Lincoln College Preparatory Academy in Kansas City, Missouri.

University President Diane Steele described Mondaine in a statement as a “humble, gentle soul.” A prayer service is planned for Tuesday night at the university’s Annunciation Chapel.