By MEGAN HART

More than 80,000 Kansans have signed up for 2016 coverage through the federal insurance marketplace — a bump of about 30,000 in the week before the deadline. The Kansas Association for the Medically Underserved reported 84,631 people in Kansas and 253,099 in Missouri had enrolled through healthcare.gov as of Saturday. The enrollments were close to the totals for last year’s sign-ups.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services had set a deadline of Dec. 15 to get coverage that would start Jan. 1, but later extended the deadline to the early-morning hours of Dec. 17.

Sheldon Weisgrau, director of the Health Reform Resource Project in Kansas, said the numbers were a positive sign that the decision by two companies under the Aetna corporate umbrella — Coventry Health & Life Insurance Co. and Coventry Health Care of Kansas Inc. — to pull out of the Kansas marketplace didn’t cause consumers to walk away.

More than half of the Kansans who enrolled in the marketplace last year had a plan through Coventry, he said. The Health Reform Resource Project is partly funded by the Kansas Health Foundation, which also funds the Kansas Health Institute, parent organization of the editorially independent KHI News Service.

“We were expecting a lot of confusion and consternation with consumers, and we haven’t seen a lot of that,” he said. “Our navigators are reporting that consumers aren’t that upset, it’s not that big of a deal, and they’re happy to go in and look at new plans.”

HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell said 8.2 million people had signed up through the federal marketplace as of Saturday, which was up from about 6.4 million people at the same time last year. About 2.4 million of those who signed up this year were new to the marketplace, and the population skewed younger than last year’s, she said.

Open enrollment closes Jan. 31 for coverage starting March 1. After then, people who aren’t insured can only purchase coverage through the marketplace if they have a qualifying event, such as losing job-based insurance.

The penalty for not having insurance in 2016 will increase to 2.5 percent of household income or $695 per adult, whichever is higher, unless the family qualifies for a hardship exemption. The maximum penalty is $20,600 for a family.

On deadline About 50,000 people in Kansas and 130,000 in Missouri had signed up for insurance through healthcare.gov as of Dec. 12, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. As of Dec. 19 — a week later — those numbers has climbed to 84,631 people in Kansas and 253,099 in Missouri.  

Megan Hart  is a reporter for Heartland Health Monitor, a news collaboration focusing on health issues and their impact in Missouri and Kansas.

KANSAS CITY – A Kansas City, Kan., man who pointed a gun at a woman and pushed her out a driver’s side door before stealing her car was sentenced Monday to 180 months in federal prison, according to U.S. Attorney Barry Grissom.

The sentence is to be served consecutively to a 10-year sentence in another federal case.

John Michael Devosha, 25, Kansas City, Kan., pleaded guilty to one count of carjacking and one count of using a firearm in furtherance of carjacking.

In his plea, he admitted that on Oct. 22, 2013, was already under federal indictment in another case when he wrecked a stolen pickup truck near 59th and Leavenworth Road in Kansas City, Kan. He abandoned the car and fled on foot in search of another car.

A woman who was driving a 2002 Cadillac Deville was stopped in traffic congestion created by the wreck. Devosha used the handle of his gun to break the woman’s front passenger window and enter her car. He pointed a gun at the woman and told her to drive away fast. Before she could do it, he pushed her out the driver’s side door and onto the road, where she stumbled and injured herself. Then he drove away in her car.

Three days later, Pottawatomie Tribal Police arrested him in Jackson County, Kan., after a 45-mile high speed chase on U.S. Highway 75.

Grissom commended the Pottawatomie Tribal Police, he Kansas City, Kan., Police Department, the Bureau Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Erin Tomasic, as well as agencies that participated in the arrest including officers from Brown, Jefferson and Jackson counties, as well as police from Holton and Sabetha and the Kickapoo and Sac and Fox tribes.

WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — A former magistrate judge in Kansas faces federal charges accusing him of defrauding a judge’s association out of about $24,000.

The Joplin Globe reports  former Magistrate Judge Bill Lyerla was indicted last month on wire fraud charges. The indictment was unsealed in early December when Lyerla pleaded innocent and was released on $5,000 bond.

Online court records don’t list a lawyer for Lyerla, who’s accused of defrauding the Kansas District Municipal Judges Association out of $24,000. Lyerla resigned after he was suspended in 2014 from the 11th Judicial District, which serves Cherokee, Labette and Crawford counties.

The website of the Kansas District Magistrate Judges Association also lists Lyerla as a former treasurer for the association.

A message left at a phone listing under Lyerla’s name wasn’t immediately returned Wednesday.

LEAVENWORTH, Kan. (AP) — An internal investigation has found that a Veterans Affairs medical center in Leavenworth used unauthorized wait lists, but didn’t substantiate claims the lists were used to falsify wait times for veterans.

The Topeka Capital-Journal reports that the Veterans Affairs Inspector General’s Office investigated falsified wait list claims following a 2014 complaint. Their report was released Tuesday.

Inspectors say Leavenworth eye clinic scheduling staff used wait lists that had not been approved by the VA. The report also says that staff members weren’t trained to use the VA-approved electronic wait lists.

The Veterans Health Administration, a component of the VA, doesn’t track wait times for cataract surgery so inspectors concluded the Leavenworth facility didn’t use unapproved lists to distort its wait times, as a complaint had claimed.

GALVA — The National Transportation Safety Board says that the accident involving two Union Pacific freight trains in McPherson County in September of last year, was caused by poor placement of
control signals just west of where the two trains collided at a siding near Galva.  

The NTSB report released last week says the green LED signal  masked  the red signal aspect at the east end of the Galva siding, resulting in the crew of eastbound train passing the red stop signal and colliding with the westbound train. The report also says that Union Pacific failed  to conduct a risk assessment of the new control point installation at the siding which was also a factor in the accident..

The accident happened around 5:44 a.m. when the westbound train was entering a siding, but it had not cleared the main track and was struck by the eastbound train. Five multi-platform intermodal cars derailed from the westbound train. Two locomotive units and four multi-platform intermodal cars derailed from the eastbound train.

UP estimated about 200 gallons of diesel fuel leaked from the fuel tank of one of the derailed locomotives. No crewmembers on either train were seriously injured. No fire resulted from the collision.

 

DODGE CITY, Kan. (AP) — A Kansas electric utility provider has contracted with a company to construct a 280-megawatt wind farm for Ford County.

The Hutchinson News (https://bit.ly/1IqJpit ) reports that Westar Energy contracted the more than $400 million Western Plains Wind Farm with Infinity Wind Power of Santa Barbara, California.

Construction is expected to start in late spring or early summer. Infinity will build the farm and then turn it over to Westar. Officials hope to have the farm completed by the end of 2016 or by early 2017.

According to Westar, the Ford County project will include land lease royalties paid to local landowners and payments to local and county government of about $75 million during the first 20 years of operation.

Utility officials say the project will create more than 200 construction jobs.

GREAT BEND, Kan. (AP) — A former Kansas Highway Patrol trooper has been convicted of threatening his wife and children.

The Great Bend Tribune reports that Darrin Hirsh was convicted Tuesday in Barton County District Court of aggravated assault, criminal threat and domestic battery. He was found not guilty of witness intimidation and violating a protective order.

Hirsh was accused of threatening his wife with a handgun and verbally threatening the life of her and their children on March 12, 2013, and with violating a protective order on March 11 and 12, 2014.

The witness intimidation counts alleged he tried to keep his wife from reporting the crime.

MANHATTAN – Law enforcement authorities in Riley County are investigating a reported shooting on Tuesday evening.

Officers with the Riley County Police Department responded just before 6:30 p.m. to the 200 block of East Park Road in the Manhattan City Park for a report of a juvenile who had sustained a gunshot wound to the leg, according to a police department media release.

Officers on scene were able to determine that the wound appeared to be accidental and possibly self-inflicted.

Throughout further investigation officers found that a firearm had gone off accidentally inside of a vehicle, which was occupied by several juveniles.

The driver, a 16-year-old boy, was stuck in the upper leg and required transport to Via Christi for medical treatment.

Police filed a criminal report for the offense of criminal use of a weapon and continue to investigate the matter.

No arrests had been made or citations issued. Police did not release the names of those involved.

WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — The Kansas Supreme Court has struck down a law that attempts to curb its administrative power to appoint chief judges and threatened the state judiciary’s entire budget.

The high court ruled on Wednesday that the law changing how chief judges are selected is unconstitutional.

District Judge Larry Solomon of Kingman County challenged the 2014 law, which says judges in the state’s 31 judicial districts pick their chief judges. The law takes that authority away from the Supreme Court.

The justices upheld a Shawnee County district judge ruling in September that the law improperly interfered with Supreme Court’s power granted in the state constitution.

Lawmakers passed another law, now on hold, saying that if the administrative change is overturned, the court system’s budget through June 2017 would be invalidated.

By ANDY MARSO  & MEGAN HART

The reported rape of an employee at Osawatomie State Hospital in October exposed security concerns that federal officials cited when they decided last week to stop sending Medicare payments to the facility after Monday.

Osawatomie had submitted a correction plan for the security issues to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, but federal inspectors who visited the hospital Dec. 15 and Friday to follow up decided to proceed with cutting payments, said Angela de Rocha, a spokeswoman for the Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services.

De Rocha said she did not know why inspectors determined the facility wasn’t in compliance, and documents provided by CMS didn’t detail the results of the follow-up inspections.

CMS inspectors cited the reported Oct. 27 sexual assault in a deficiencies report last month. They identified multiple problems with security, including insufficient nursing staff to perform patient status checks, security staff who were present but didn’t perform required safety checks and inadequate supervision in areas where patients at risk of suicide could be in danger.

The plan of correction involved requiring nurse managers to spend more time directly supervising activities on the floor; assessing patients for their risk of violence toward others; retraining nurses and security staff, including reminding security officers not to leave the facility while on breaks; and instructing staff to use personal alarm devices and to respond if someone else’s alarm activates.

The plan also involved recruiting more security staff, including a dispatcher, and monitoring for “adequate” staffing levels. All provisions of the plan had been implemented before the follow-up inspections, de Rocha said.

Rebecca Proctor, executive director of the Kansas Organization of State Employees, said Osawatomie workers told her staffing was a factor in the Oct. 27 attack.

Proctor said mental health technicians used to make their rounds in pairs but are now going into patients’ rooms alone.

“I’ve had some employees tell me that’s what put the employee who was raped by a patient in danger, is that she was out by herself without a partner, but that staffing levels do not allow you to have a partner any more,” Proctor said.

The female employee, an unidentified mental health technician, said she was taking gowns to a patient’s room about 8:30 p.m. Oct. 27 when the patient grabbed her and covered her mouth.

“I was trying to scream and was banging on the walls and he raped me,” the report quoted her as saying.

The mental health technician said she didn’t think any staff could hear her, but two patients “saved” her by coming into the room and shoving the assailant off her. In a separate interview, one of the patients said he heard “someone screaming, crying and the word ‘rape,’” and found the staff member on the assailant’s bed.

The patient charged with the rape reportedly suffered from psychosis, which causes delusions or hallucinations, and was to receive checks from nursing staff every 15 minutes due to a risk of suicide.

But surveillance video footage showed that neither the nursing checks nor required safety checks by security personnel were performed during that hour.

Hospital administrators told federal regulators the facility didn’t have enough registered nurses and, though concerns about missed safety checks had come up in the past, security staff had not been retrained.

Federal regulators determined that the conditions leading up to the alleged rape were not isolated.

The CMS deficiencies report said nursing staff didn’t provide proper oversight of patient care, security staff didn’t perform rounds checks and nursing staff didn’t perform status checks. Some patients also weren’t supervised in bathrooms with fixtures that would allow them to commit suicide by hanging, something inspectors noted after watching video recorded in the hallway in the half-hour before and after the attack.

“The cumulative effect of the systemic failure to supervise the provision of care, to perform required safety checks and to protect suicidal patients from hanging risks placed all patients receiving services at risk for harm,” the report said.

Proctor said staffing always has been a key challenge at the hospital.

But she said it has become more challenging since the state transferred inpatient mental health beds and state jobs from the Rainbow Mental Health Facility in Kansas City, Kan., to Osawatomie in early 2014.

Stagnant pay for longtime employees and increasingly difficult working conditions also have made it hard to recruit and retain staff, she said.

“When you hear about a 20-something female employee being raped by a patient, it makes you think (about) whether putting yourself in harm’s way like that is really worth 13 bucks an hour,” Proctor said. “I think a lot of people don’t think so, and therein lies your staffing problem.”

A letter dated Nov. 27 noted CMS could immediately cut off Medicare payments to Osawatomie but offered opportunities to make changes because of the hospital’s role in the state mental health system.

“This offer is being extended in light of the unique role Osawatomie has in the provision of mental health services in the state and is being offered despite the facility’s failure to make substantial improvements in the facility’s ongoing non-compliance with Federal Conditions of Participation,” the letter said.

CMS reversed that decision last week.

Osawatomie is one of two state-run inpatient treatment facilities for Kansans with severe and persistent mental illness. The other is in Larned. The Osawatomie facility is usually equipped for 206 patients but is allowed only 146 now, while renovations are under way to correct deficiencies that threatened the hospital’s federal reimbursements last year. In 2014, Medicare payments made up 23 percent of the hospital’s total budget.

De Rocha said the state will continue to serve patients at Osawatomie. The facility could pursue recertification with Medicare or could take other routes, she said, adding it was too early to know what the state would do.

“We will continue to cover patients that are there,” she said. “We will continue to admit patients. The hospital is not closing.”

Andy Marso and Megan Hart are reporters for KHI News Service in Topeka, a partner in the Heartland Health Monitor team. You can reach Marso on Twitter @andymarso.

KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) — A 17-year-old has been charged in a Kansas City, Kansas, shooting death.

The Wyandotte County district attorney’s office announced Tuesday that the teen is charged with one count of first-degree murder in the Nov. 4 death of 37-year-old Andrew Harman. The Kansas City, Kansas, teen also is charged with two counts of aggravated assault with a firearm, and one count of criminal possession of a firearm by a prohibited person.

The teen is in custody, and a hearing on the district attorney’s motion to prosecute him as an adult is not yet scheduled.

Police are investigating.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — A suburban Kansas City accountant accused of stealing more than $4 million from clients has pleaded guilty to federal charges.

Federal prosecutors in Kansas City said in a release that 42-year-old Thomas Hauk of Overland Park, Kansas, pleaded guilty Tuesday to several charges, including bank fraud, wire fraud and money laundering.

The prosecutor’s office says Hauk was an accountant from 2005 to 2015 when he engaged in several schemes to defraud the company he worked for by embezzling more than $4 million from clients’ accounts. He then used the money to pay for living expenses, vehicles and jewelry.

Sentencing hasn’t been scheduled.

HUTCHINSON. – Attorneys in a Kansas teen’s murder case continue to debate audio and video recordings done by police during their investigation.

During a hearing held Tuesday in the Sam Vonachen case, the defense for the teen accused of two counts of first degree murder for a fire that killed his mother and sister wanted a transcript written from a court reporter outside of the case to be presented to the Judge so that she can compare it to audio from an in car camera.

That audio is part of an overall motion to suppress various audio and video recordings done by police in the case.

That hearing is expected to resume on Monday. While the transcript will not be used as evidence, prosecuting attorney Steve Maxwell objected to the use of the transcript.

Maxwell says it contained several inaccuracies stating that several key pieces of audio that were plainly evident during the hearing were written down as inaudible in the defense transcript.

Judge Trish Rose said she will take transcripts from both sides and look them over while listening to the audio.

Vonachen is accused of setting fire to the family home killing his mother and sister in September of 2013.