TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — A recent legislative audit has found that a new computer system designed to make it easier for Kansas residents to apply for Medicaid and other social services is more than two years past due and at least $46 million over budget.
The Legislative Post Audit says the Kansas Eligibility Enforcement System won’t perform as originally intended when it goes fully online, or produce the projected savings in operational costs.
The Lawrence Journal-World reports the system was designed to allow people to fill out a single application that would be used to determine eligibility for Medicaid, food stamps, cash assistance and other social services.
Auditors say the project ran into several issues, including complex coordination between federal and state agencies.
LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) — Two fraternities at the University of Kansas are on probation for hazing.
The Lawrence Journal-World reports documents obtained through an open records request show Delta Tau Delta and Phi Beta Sigma were placed on probation this spring. Hazing at Delta Tau Delta occurred in fall 2014, and hazing by Phi Beta Sigma occurred in spring 2015.
The university prohibits hazing, which it says can include anything from “extreme embarrassment” to endangering someone’s physical health.
The university didn’t detail what hazing occurred or whether the fraternities have complied with the terms of their probations so far.
Delta Tau Delta’s national headquarters says some members of the Kansas chapter have been disciplined. The national headquarters of Phi Beta says on its website that a few members have been suspended through 2019.
GRAY COUNTY – Two people were injured in an accident just before 12-noon on Monday in Gray County.
The Kansas Highway Patrol reported a 2007 Toyota Corolla driven by Zachary A. Pierson, 19, Moscow, was westbound on U.S. 50 just west of Ingalls.
The Toyota rear-ended a 2011 Dodge truck driven by Larry D, Jonagan, 40, Ingalls.
Pierson and a passenger Hope E. Pierson, 46, Moscow were transported to St. Catherine’s Hospital in Garden City. Jonagan and a passenger were not injured.
All were properly restrained at the time of the accident, according to the KHP.
SHAWNEE, Kan. (AP) — Health regulators say one person who ate at a Chipotle restaurant in Kansas became ill in a new, late November E. coli outbreak that sickened five people in three states.
Kansas Department of Health and Environment spokeswoman Sara Belfry said Monday the person ate at Chiptole’s Shawnee Mission Parkway location the week of Nov. 23. No other details were released.
Jesus Martinez is a kitchen manager at that location. He says food safety is the top priority right now and managers are watching to make sure staff follows health and safety procedures.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the latest outbreak occurred between Nov. 18 and Nov. 26.
A larger outbreak, which began in October, sickened 53 people in nine states.
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NEW YORK (AP) — The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says it is investigating more recent cases of E. coli cases linked to Chipotle, and that it does not know yet if they are linked to a larger outbreak that began at the end of October.
So far, the agency says five people have been identified in the new outbreak, including one in Kansas, one in North Dakota and three in Oklahoma. It says those illnesses started between Nov. 18 and Nov. 26, and all five said they ate at a Chipotle the week before they got sick.
For the larger outbreak linked to Chipotle, the most recent case had been on Nov. 10.
Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. has said it is implementing new standards to ensure food safety.
WICHITA – Law enforcement authorities in Sumner and Sedgwick County were involved in a high-speed chase and death on Sunday
Just before 10a.m, according to a Sedgwick County Sheriff’s Department media release, a deputy tried to stop a red Oldsmobile Bravada near 183rd Street West and U.S. 54 near Wichita.
The driver refused to stop and a pursuit was initiated eastbound on U.S. 54 then south onto Interstate 135, exiting at 47th Street South.
The pursuit continued in light Sunday morning traffic through areas of southern Wichita and Sedgwick County, with the suspect avoiding tire deflation devices, before entering the Kansas Turnpike southbound at 119th Street South.
The suspect continued south on the turnpike at speeds of 75 to 80 mph before turning in to the Belle Plaine service area near milepost 26 in Sumner County.
He then left the service area heading north in the southbound lanes of the Kansas Turnpike.
The suspect’s vehicle hit spike strips but the driver still refused to stop, driving against traffic.
Because of increasing danger to the public, the suspect’s vehicle was forced in to the ditch by a patrol vehicle.
After he was stopped, deputies approached the Oldsmobile and saw the suspect had stab himself in the neck and upper chest area.
Deputies and KHP troopers removed the suspect from the vehicle and they immediately administered first aid.
Despite the best efforts of the law enforcement officers, the suspect was pronounced dead at the scene by EMS shortly before 11 a.m.
The death investigation is being conducted by the Sumner County Sheriff’s Office and the Patrol Division of the Sedgwick County Sheriff’s Office is reviewing the pursuit.
SEWARD COUNTY – Law enforcement authorities in Seward County are investigating an alleged homicide.
Just before 1 a.m., on Saturday, emergency responders were called to 207 W. 6th for a reported stabbing, according to a media release from Liberal Police.
A witness directed police officers inside the residence. The witness stated his brother had been stabbed and the suspect was still in the residence.
Officers entered the home and apprehended a 42-year-old man.
Officers located the unresponsive victim inside the residence and began life saving efforts.
Seward County EMS transported the victim to Southwest Medical Center where he died. The victim was identified as Guy Terry, 46.
Investigators learned that both men were residents of the home. An argument ensued and then turned physical.
The suspect was booked into the Seward County Jail on a requested charge of murder in the second degree, according to police.
An affidavit will be sent to the Seward County Attorney for the filing of formal charges.
HUTCHINSON, Kan. (AP) — A 30-year-old Kansas man has been sentenced to less than 13 years in prison for raping a girl who was under the age of 14.
The Hutchison News reports that Steve Love Jr. pleaded no contest last month to a single count of rape. In the plea agreement, prosecutors dismissed a charge of aggravated indecent liberties with a child.
He was sentenced Friday to 12 years and 11 months in prison. He’s also required to register for life as a sexual offender and remain under lifetime post-release supervision.
The Reno County district attorney’s office says it agreed to support a lesser sentence in order to prevent the victim from having to testify. The defendant could have faced life in prison.
SALINA- Law enforcement authorities in Saline County are investigating a suspect on alleged sex crimes.
Charles W. Stephens, 52, Salina was arrested Sunday on requested charges of two counts of rape, aggravated criminal sodomy, criminal restraint, and lewd and lascivious behavior, according to the Saline County Sheriff’s Office.
Stephens is alleged to have had sexual contact with two pre-teen girls Saturday afternoon at a home in Saline County, according to Saline County Sheriff’s Captain Roger Soldan.
The parents of the girls contacted the Sheriff’s Office Saturday.
HARVEY COUNTY – One person was injured in an accident just after 7a.m. on Monday in Harvey County.
The Kansas Highway Patrol reported a 2000 GMC pickup driven by Isabella Irene Eckard, 24, Tuscon, AZ, was eastbound on U.S. 50 two miles north of Halstead.
The pickup entered the west ditch, struck a driveway, a KDOT sign and rolled.
Eckard was transported Wesley Medical Center.
She was properly restrained at the time of the accident, according to the KHP.
Mary Reynolds, left, worked to get Medicaid coverage for the children of her ex-husband, Andy Rausch, right, while he was hospitalized in July. The complicated applications were approved after four months. ANDY MARSO HEARTLAND HEALTH MONITOR
The Kansas Legislature’s auditors say that the rollout of the computer system the state now uses to process Medicaid applications was long delayed in part because the contractor’s software required numerous modifications.
State officials say the system is improving and ultimately will make applying for Medicaid and social services a much more efficient process.
But documents obtained by KHI News Service show that state workers must learn dozens of “workarounds” to process applications. And some service providers who help clients get Medicaid coverage are reporting much longer processing times since the system went live in July and the state deals with a backlog of applications.
Kansas signed a contract with Accenture to build the Kansas Eligibility Enforcement System, or KEES, in 2011. The system originally was slated to be complete by the end of 2013, , but considerable delays caused lawmakers to seek an audit in March.
The audit report said the KEES timeline was unrealistic from the beginning. The system had to be adjusted because of state and federal changes to Medicaid, some due to the Affordable Care Act. But there also were problems with Accenture’s “out-of-the-box” software.
“Although many modifications to the software were anticipated, far more extensive changes were required to meet the state’s needs,” wrote the Legislative Post Audit team, led by Matt Etzel. “These modifications required additional time to plan, design and implement and therefore increased the cost to build KEES.”
Auditors also determined that some of the functions Accenture promised had to be postponed, reduced or scrapped.
Hundreds of workarounds
Documents show that the state developed almost 400 workarounds during the KEES testing phases for employees to overcome problems or limitations within the system.
Aaron Dunkel, deputy secretary of KDHE, said that was a small number compared to other states that had done similar technical revamps.
“It’s put us leaps and bounds ahead of other states,” Dunkel said of KEES.
The documents show that more than 50 workarounds — some of them with 10 or more steps — have been added or changed since mid-June, when the program was about to go live. A state employee who requested anonymity said the system workarounds are causing delays in processing Medicaid applications.
According to a former state agency information technology director, the documents indicate that KEES was not ready for rollout.
“I’d be very concerned if this were my system and this is what I was seeing, that we had put it into production too soon and without adequate testing,” said Neil Woerman, who worked as a technology director for the Kansas Insurance Department.
Glen Yancey, chief information officer for KDHE, has led the state’s oversight of the KEES project since 2013. He said every project he’s worked on required “instruction sets for people to use in order to efficiently use the system.”
“That’s what those workarounds are — instructions on how to use the system correctly,” Yancey said.
The auditors said the state’s management of KEES appears to have improved since Yancey took over.
Sara Belfry, a spokeswoman for KDHE, said KEES is “up and running” and the agency has “implemented fixes to improve processing time.”
The agency also is getting help for workers dealing with a backlog of more than 6,000 Medicaid applications, she said. Kansas Medicaid, or KanCare, currently serves more than 420,000 people.
“Actions have been undertaken to address and eliminate the pending applications,” Belfry said. “We have added and re-deployed additional staff to increase application processing capacity and continue to make system improvements to decrease application processing time.”
Providers report delays
Organizations that help Kansans apply for Medicaid say a process that used to take 10 days can now take more than a month, or even several months. That can have consequences for both patients and providers.
Andy Rausch, a 41-year-old from Parsons, was in a coma while his children were struggling to get Medicaid coverage.
Rausch has had a heart condition for most of his adult life. Complications from a routine dental procedure in July turned into a life-threatening blood clot, a trip to a hospital in St. Louis and a long recovery.
“I was in the hospital for three months,” Rausch said. “And still nothing happened for the kids the entire three months.”
While Rausch was incapacitated, his ex-wife and some of her co-workers at the SKIL Resource Center in Parsons were trying to get coverage for his children, including one who needs medication for a chronic condition.
It ultimately took four months. Rausch’s children had complicated applications because of shared custody and changes in their father’s income due to his illness. But SKIL director Shari Coatney and her staff who serve Kansans with disabilities said that kind of timeline has become increasingly common since the state began processing Medicaid applications through KEES.
Bill Persinger, CEO of Valeo Behavioral Services in Topeka, said his workers also had reported problems with Medicaid since KEES went live.
Persinger said that in addition to applications taking longer, some Valeo clients who were on Medicaid have been dropped from the program improperly.
“It’s a concern to us,” he said. “It’s something our benefits counselor is helping people with.”
Valeo continues to provide services in those situations, Persinger said, and tries to seek retroactive Medicaid reimbursement once the client is covered. It hasn’t affected his organization’s cash flow yet.
“I will say that Medicaid is a pretty sizable chunk of our fee-for-service third-party income. So if there were considerable delays with that, I think it could represent some income disruption,” Persinger said. “But I’m not concerned about that right now, because I’m assuming it’s going to be a short-run problem and folks will fix it.”
Yancey said any new system has a “learning curve to the workforce.”
“You’re certainly going to take an initial dip in productivity,” he said. “When you come out on the other end, you’re actually more efficient.”
Yancey said the ACA also made the rules for determining Medicaid eligibility more complex, requiring more data collection than in the past and causing some processing delays.
Social services applications to be added to system
The KEES system has not been fully implemented. Applications for other social services programs like food stamps and cash assistance through the Department for Children and Families are scheduled to be incorporated with the Medicaid processing portion in the spring.
A backlog of more than 30,000 applications for food stamps grew in North Carolina last year after that state switched to a similar computer system, which also was developed by Accenture.
Most of Accenture’s $135 million contract to build KEES comes from federal funds, as does an additional $50 million for ongoing maintenance.
“Accenture has worked according to the contract and met delivery requirements, and remains strongly committed to the success of KEES,” Accenture spokesman Joe Dickie said via email.
The auditors estimate that the KEES project will end up about $46 million over budget, but the federal government is expected to shoulder most of those costs as well.
The state has renegotiated some of the terms of the ongoing maintenance contract. When asked if Accenture would continue on the project, Belfry seemed to signal no change was imminent.
“Accenture has been a good partner to work with while implementing this complex and innovative IT system,” she said. “KDHE, DCF and Accenture are committed to the success of KEES.”
Woerman said that based on the workaround documents, the system appears to have some technical problems, but most of the workarounds are meant to address what he called “business rules.” That is, the system may be working as designed from an information technology standpoint, but the design did not seamlessly integrate the complex Kansas Medicaid eligibility regulations.
“These are very, very complex systems,” he said. “The business rules are massive.”
Woerman worked on an insureks.org website that helped consumers estimate how much of a tax credit they might be eligible for on the Affordable Care Act federal Healthcare.gov marketplace. He said the problems with KEES put into context the issues that hopelessly bogged down the federal exchange when it first went live.
“This is strikingly similar to what they were dealing with,” Woerman said, “and the big difference here is you have state employees who don’t have the same recourse for raising the issues.”
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
WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — A fourth man has been charged with first-degree murder in a Dec. 1 double homicide in Wichita.
The Wichita Eagle reports that 25-year-old Quincy Carter was charged Friday with two counts of first-degree murder, two counts of criminal discharge of a firearm and criminal possession of a weapon by a convicted felon.
He was arrested Thursday afternoon and is being held in the Sedgwick County Jail on a $500,000 bond. He is scheduled to appear in court Dec. 31, although that hearing will likely be postponed.
Twenty-four-year-old Brent Carter, 19-year-old Jonathan Carter and 19-year-old Jamion Wimbley have also been charged in the deaths of 55-year-old Betty Ann Holloman and 24-year-old Brenton Oliver.
It wasn’t immediately clear if the men have attorneys who could comment on their behalf.
LAS VEGAS (AP) — Oops! Comedian and talk show host Steve Harvey says he’s sorry for the major mixup at Sunday night’s Miss Universe pageant. Harvey incorrectly read the card announcing this year’s Miss Universe winner, and announced that Colombia contestant Ariadna Gutierrez Arevalo was the winner.
I’d like to apologize wholeheartedly to Miss Colombia & Miss Philippines for my huge mistake. I feel terrible.
She actually was first runner-up. But Arevalo already was wearing the crown before Harvey returned to apologize. The real winner is Pia Alonzo Wurtzbach of the Philippines.
GEARY COUNTY- A Kansas man died in an accident just after 10:30p.m. on Sunday in Geary County.
The Kansas Highway Patrol reported a 2014 Suzuki motorcycle driven by Edward I. Ablang, 29, Fort Riley, was northbound on U.S. 77 two miles south of Junction City.
The driver failed to maintain a lane of traffic. The motorcycle went off the roadway into the east ditch. It overturned several times and ejected the driver.
Ablang was pronounced dead at the scene and transported to Penwell-Gable Funeral Home.
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — A recent legislative audit has found that a new computer system designed to make it easier for Kansas residents to apply for Medicaid and other social services is more than two years past due and at least $46 million over budget.
