COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP) — Cleanup has started at a Columbia funeral home that was damaged by a suspected arson fire.
The Columbia Daily Tribune reports that Bach-Yager Funeral Chapel co-owner John Bach says he plans to fully restore the chapel and continue business there. But he says he expects the final cost will exceed the fire department’s damage estimate of $200,000.

Police and fire crews were dispatched to the chapel just before 5 a.m. Sunday. Battalion Chief Brad Fraizer says evidence found at the scene combined with interviews with witnesses led arson investigators to deem that the blaze was intentionally set. No one was injured, and Bach says no bodies were inside the chapel at the time of the fire.

GIRARD, Kan. (AP) — A former employee of a southeast Kansas bank was sentenced to nearly six years in prison for stealing more than $2.5 million from her employer.

The U.S. Attorney announced 54-year-old Cynthia Bright, of Girard, was sentenced Thursday to five years and 10 months in prison. She pleaded guilty in June to one count of bank fraud.

Bright admitted she took the money over 10 years while she was operations supervisor at Girard National Bank.

Prosecutors say Bright used several methods to steal the money. She wrote checks on her own accounts but altered records so the money wasn’t taken from her account. She also altered records to post checks to other accounts and diverted funds from the bank’s accounts to her own.

 

By Alex Smith

Heartland Health Monitor

About 3,000 infants are born each year with single-ventricle heart defects.

While that’s a relatively small number, for the newborns’ families the diagnosis can be devastating, says Dr. Girish Shirali, co-director of the Ward Family Heart Center at Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City.

“It’s very difficult for families, because nobody expects this. So it kind of comes like a bolt from the blue,” he says.

These infants have underdeveloped lower heart chambers, or chambers that are missing a valve. They typically need three major heart surgeries to redirect blood circulation, including one within a few days of birth.

The period between that surgery and the second one a few months later is perilous. As many as one in five newborns with the diagnosis die in the first few months of life, and their condition needs to be carefully tracked and recorded for danger signs.

During that critical time, it’s usually up to the parents to closely track their babies’ oxygen saturation levels and weight at home.

“One of our concerns has been just the amount of stress that that puts on the families, because the responsibility is kind of now shifted on to them,” Shirali says.

In the past, when parents of newborns with single-ventricle heart defects left the hospital, they usually brought home both their baby and a big, clunky three-ring binder.

But at an American Heart Association conference today in Chicago, Shirali will introduce a tablet-based app that could make a big difference in monitoring and treating these conditions.

The app, created by Children’s Mercy researchers, is called the Cardiac High-Acuity Monitoring Program, or CHAMP. It connects via Bluetooth to oxygen meters and sends the oxygen saturation data along with weight and feeding information to the infant’s pediatric team.

“So then situations that we consider high risk, for example, the coordinator’s pager might go off instantly, as soon as they confirm the saturation level is too low,” Shirali says.

If the team sees warning signs in the data, it may ask the parents to bring the infant in for emergency treatment.

The app can also send videos showing how an infant is breathing and interacting.

“If they’re feeling good, they lock eyes with their parents, and they start to smile and coo and gurgle and interact, which is just great,” Shirali says. “And if they’re not feeling that good, they get a little furrow between their eyes, and they don’t feel like smiling. They’re very straightforward and simple, these babies.”

Shirali says that it’s hard for now to say what effect the app might have on mortality rates. A test group of 18 families used the device along with other new interventions, and the outcomes were promising.

“We have not lost any of those babies,” he says. “And that’s been really exciting for us, because, on average, out of 18, we would expect to lose two or four by this time.”

Shirali says he’s also excited about other potential uses for the technology, including monitoring of blood pressure, diabetes and asthma. And not just for newborns, but for adults as well.

The app was developed in collaboration with the Claire Giannini Fund and Heart to Heart Network, Inc. The fund has financed the distribution of 200 units nationally.

Alex Smith 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 man was injured in an accident just before 6p.m. on Thursday in Wyandotte County.

The Kansas Highway Patrol reported a 2003 Chevy Trailblazer driven by Thomas L. Soverns, 40, Kansas City, was northbound on Interstate 435 one mile south of Holliday in far right lane.

Witnesses at the scene advised, a non-contact vehicle was driving aggressively and swerved towards the Trailblazer as if to cut it off.

The Trailblazer swerved to the right and went off the roadway where it overturned multiple times. The other vehicle then fled the scene.

Soverns was transported to Overland Park Regional Medical Center.
The KHP reported he was properly restrained at the time of the accident.

ST. CHARLES (AP) – A Missouri woman who admitted to selling marijuana and smoking methamphetamine in the house where she ran a day care has avoided jail time.

A judge on Thursday sentenced 30-year-old Brooke Mitchell of St. Charles to a five-year suspended sentence. She isn’t allowed to operate an in-home day care and has to submit to random drug testing.

Mitchell pleaded guilty to possessing a controlled substance and to distributing a controlled substance.

Authorities in September 2013 found the drugs in the home where Mitchell cared for her two children and five preschool-aged children.

COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP) — Columbia police are searching for a man who robbed an area bank.
Officers were dispatched to the Central Bank of Missouri on Thursday. A witness tells police the man demanded money and implied he had a gun. Police say the man fled the scene on a bicycle.
No one was injured and it’s unclear if the man was armed.
Police didn’t say how much money was taken.
Officers are investigating.

JEFFERSON CITY (AP) – A new judge has been nominated for the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri.

President Barack Obama on Thursday nominated Roseann A. Ketchmark for the position, which must also be confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

Obama has been pushing to fill judicial seats while Democrats still have control of the chamber.

Ketchmark has served as assistant U.S. attorney for the Western District of Missouri for 13 years. She has worked as a first assistant prosecutor in Platte County and began her career as an assistant prosecutor in Jackson County.

She earned her law degree at the University of Kansas School of Law and her undergraduate degree at the University of Oklahoma.

MATTHEW PERRONE, AP Health Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal health regulators have approved the first hard-to-abuse version of the painkiller hydrocodone, offering an alternative to a similar medication that has been widely criticized for lacking such safeguards.

The Food and Drug Administration approved Purdue Pharma’s Hysingla ER, for patients with severe, round-the-clock pain that cannot be managed with other treatments. The once-a-day tablet is designed to resist attempts to crush it for snorting or injecting. Purdue Pharma’s new drug poses a direct commercial challenge to Zogenix’s much-debated drug Zohydro, a twice-a-day hydrocodone tablet approved by the FDA last year.

Doctors prescribe opioids for a range of ailments, from post-surgical pain to arthritis and migraines. Deaths linked to abuse of the medications have quadrupled since 1990 to nearly 17,000 annually, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Pat Roberts (R–Kan.) issued the following statement in response to President Obama’s executive order granting amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants:

“President Obama’s executive order directly defies the clear message the American people sent with their vote on election night. The President has no interest in a constructive working relationship with Congress.  He has no intention of listening to the will American people, and he has no respect for the Constitutional boundaries of his office.

“We are a nation of laws. The President swore an oath to uphold those laws, and this action flies in the face of that promise.

By Andy Marso
KHI News Service

TOPEKA — A $135 million computer system meant to streamline applications for Kansas social services, including Medicaid, remains without a final “go-live” date more than a year after the rollout was originally scheduled to be completed.

Glen Yancey, chief information officer for the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, said Tuesday that his staff is “making final assessments” of the readiness the Kansas Eligibility and Enforcement System, or KEES.

Yancey declined to give a rollout target date, though, saying that policymakers above him have to make that call.
“They ultimately make the decision whether we’re ready to go live,” Yancey said. “We think we’re close.”

Yancey appeared before a legislative committee Tuesday to brief lawmakers on the program’s progress.

In February he said he was confident that the KEES rollout would be complete in “weeks or months rather than years.”

He said Tuesday that was still the plan.

“We haven’t changed our trajectory,” Yancey said.

The state has completed more preliminary phases of KEES, which was approved in 2011 when the state contracted with Accenture to perform the upgrade. It was initially expected to be complete by October 2013.

Of the $85 million in startup costs, $60 million was paid for by the federal government, which partners with the state to fund Medicaid. An additional $10 million in maintenance costs for each of the first five years also was estimated.
In 2011 the state also uncoupled the application process for Medicaid and a cash assistance program called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF.

At Tuesday’s legislative hearing, Hilary Gee of the nonprofit Kansas Action for Children said that was one of several policy changes that appeared to be making it harder for struggling Kansas families to receive TANF. Gee’s group provided data showing that although rates of poverty, Medicaid enrollment and food stamp enrollment had all gone up since 2011, TANF payments to families had decreased precipitously.

Gee said her group was recommending that the TANF payments be again tied to Medicaid so families could avoid duplicative applications.

Yancey said KEES will resolve that problem once it is fully up and running.

“One of the basic outcome goals of that is to create an integrated process, a one-stop shop,” Yancey said. “Whether I’m applying for Medicaid, whether I’m applying for SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) or TANF, I only have to enter my information once.”

After applicants enter that initial general information, Yancey said, the system will then prompt them to add whatever program-specific information is necessary.

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