Author: molly_burchett
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Managed care, pension payments causing problems for community mental health centers; Edelen, C-J call for changes
“Kentucky mental health centers are cutting back services and struggling to assist patients the first time they’re admitted because of ongoing struggles with Medicaid managed care,” Don Weber reports for...
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Newly formed Kentucky Health Cooperative gets OK to offer plans in state’s health insurance exchange
The new Kentucky Health Cooperative‘s health-insurance plans have received approval from the state Department of Insurance and will be available on Kentucky’s insurance exchange market when it opens in October....
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State Health Department gets diabetes prevention funding; will focus on prediabetes detection and lifestyle changes
The state Department for Public Health has been awarded a $134,380 federal grant to help reduce high rates of prediabetes and Type 2 diabetes in Kentucky. “Diabetes is a tremendous public health...
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New health ranking of counties places Oldham at top for second straight year; some counties had big jumps and drops
By Molly Burchett Kentucky Health News A new report of the national county health rankings shows several Kentucky counties have improved in the last two years while others have gotten...
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Study suggesting that coal is a cause of health problems in E. Ky. is disputed by industry and politicians, defended by researcher
By Molly Burchett Kentucky Health News A heated debate centers on new research showing that residents in Floyd County, where coal is stripped from the tops of mountains and ridges,...
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Most Kentucky adults don’t know that drug overdose is the leading cause of death in the state, but those in the east do
Drug overdoses, driven largely by prescription drug abuse, overtook motor vehicle accidents as the leading cause of unintentional deaths in Kentucky back in 2010 and remain the state’s leading cause...
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Legislature eases physician assistant rules; nurse practitioners’ prescription power, Medicaid prompt-payment bills, others linger
By Molly Burchett and Al Cross Kentucky Health News The Kentucky General Assembly has joined other states in easing the restrictions on physician assistants’ medical practice, but has held up...
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Kentucky families struggle to care for violent, mentally ill children, and say their plight has been made worse by managed-care firms
Kentucky families struggle to care for violent, mentally ill children, and say their plight has been made worse by managed-care companies that fragment mental-health care and make it harder to...
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Kentucky receives an F grade for its low funding of mental-health services; supply falls short of demand
Kentucky’s supply of mental-health services is much lower than demand for those services, in terms of state funding, and the state spends only 45 percent of the national average in mental-health...
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Kentucky hospitals gave $1.96 billion to communities in 2011, including $576.7 million cover of Medicare, Medicaid shortfalls
In 2011, despite economic and financial obstacles, Kentucky hospitals’ estimated value of benefits to their communities up 17 percent from the year before, to $1.96 billion. So says the Kentucky...