Healthcare

Comfort in Crisis

Hospital Chaplains Deliver Spiritual Care

Right from birth, this baby was sick, in trouble. “Her mother immediately asked for prayer and was very optimistic,” Kathie Knehans, then a chaplain at Children’s Mercy Hospital  told me. So Knehans prayed with the family. And even when no family members were present, Knehans, now retired, visited the child and prayed. When the still-hospitalized…

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Rural Health Care Group In Leawood Says Senate Plan Will Hit Rural Hospitals Hard

The health care plan unveiled last month by the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate met with fierce opposition from hospital, doctor and patient advocacy groups. Among them was the National Rural Health Association, which is based in Leawood, Kansas, and represents doctors, nurses and hospitals in rural areas nationwide. It says the Senate plan would spell trouble…

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photo of mercy hospital

New Attention To Struggles Of Kansas Hospitals Fuels Medicaid Expansion Effort

Renewed attention to the financial struggles of several Kansas hospitals is giving supporters of Medicaid expansion a potentially powerful argument as they work to build a veto-proof majority for a new bill. “The conversation became much more real with the renewed talk about hospital closures,” said David Jordan, director of the Alliance for a Healthy…

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Exterior of Children's Mercy Hospital

Getting Innovators To Come To Work — At A Children’s Hospital

Health care providers who work with kids are natural innovators, says Krista Nelson, Children’s Mercy Hospital’s director of innovation development. Nelson, an expert in innovation — not medicine, was hired by the hospital to run its new Center for Pediatric Innovation. “In the children’s hospital or pediatric environment, we really deal with every size of…

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Missouri Lawmakers Debate Whether Pregnancy Resource Centers Must Provide Science-Backed Information

You don’t have to drive far in Missouri to see billboards offering help to pregnant women. They’re part of the state’s Alternatives to Abortion program, which has seen a big increase in public funding in recent years. This year’s legislative debate on the program focuses on a new question: What kind of information should these…

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