Nine months into the Kansas Medicaid makeover, health care providers are struggling with KanCare reported the Kansas Health Initiative.
In Liberal, Sandra Montes, the director of patient financial services at Southwest Medical Center, continues to wrestle with the program.
“We sometimes feel like we're beating our heads against the wall,” she said, citing inconsistencies when dealing with the company’s representatives on billing or authorization issues. “There’s constant voice mails, emails, phone tags and sometimes you don't get anywhere.”
Montes and her department said the state implemented the new program too quickly with too little input from the people who actually deliver the services. She also said they deal with many nationalities who have children enrolled in the program, and act as the intermediary because patients have little or no contact with the managed care company or state officials.
Looking forward, she offers this insight.
“I would say that if you want to implement something like that in the future you should have more input from people who do the day-to-day jobs,” Montes said, “because we know what the people in our community are like and need. We could definitely help them (state officials) fine tune and make the process go smoother for everyone.”
Motes also said that the program started out as total chaos, and is improving. For more state-wide perspectives, see the entire article.
