LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) — After 25 years, the Douglas County AIDS Project plans to close.
Executive Director Trenton Garber announced the closing Monday. He said the group’s services and programs for HIV and AIDS prevention and treatment will transfer July 1 to the Lawrence-Douglas County Health Department and Heartland Community Health Center.
Garber says HIV has changed from a generally fatal disease to one that can be managed with the proper medication and treatments. He says the services need to be transferred to more health-based settings.
6News Lawrence reports the AIDS Project is funded largely by two state grants, and those grants will now go to the other organizations.
When the AIDS Project closes its doors July 31, the Health Care Access Clinic and Heartland will take over its offices and property.
VFW Adjunct General John Hamilton, center, speaks at a town hall meeting convened to discuss issues with veterans’ care.- photo Elle Moxley/KCUR
By Elle Moxley, KCUR
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — For months, Kansas City resident Cherie Fishback has been writing letters to the Department of Veterans Affairs on behalf of her boyfriend, Lee Murphy, who last year had to have emergency gallbladder surgery.
Murphy served in the Army in the 1980s and is eligible for care at the local VA hospital. But when he tried to see someone there about pain in his stomach, he was sent home with some pills. The next day, Fishback says he called her while driving to work – he’d pulled over because the pain was so bad. She says she raced him to nearby North Kansas City Hospital, where doctors decided to operate right away.
Now Murphy and Fishback are waiting on reimbursement she’s not sure will ever come
“We did everything we were told to do,” said Fishback, sifting through a stack of paperwork Monday night during a town hall meeting to discuss veterans’ access to care in Kansas City. “This copy of a letter I have from the VA telling him he needs to do something else is dated January 8, but it wasn’t sent to us until January 30. It sat somewhere for three weeks.”
About 100 people attended the Veterans of Foreign Wars-sponsored meeting at the Uptown Theater to share their experiences at Kansas City-area VA hospitals. Some veterans praised the care they receive there. But many others say lost records, denied claims and policy changes are the norm.
The meeting comes as an investigation into long wait times at a Phoenix VA hospital has brought into sharp focus problems at facilities across the country – problems veterans and their families say aren’t new. A report released Monday says at least 188 veterans enrolled at the Kansas City VA Medical Center in the last 10 years never received care.
“We’ve been talking about this for the 40 years I’ve been active in the VFW,” said John Hamilton, VFW Adjunct General. “The stories I hear today I heard when I was a young Marine sergeant many years ago.”
Hamilton says he’s glad veterans’ issues are in the spotlight. But he’s also worried everyone is focused too much on long wait times when there are larger, systemic issues that have resulted in substandard care at facilities across the country. He says that’s why the VFW did not join other veterans’ organizations in calling for VA Secretary Eric Shinseki’s resignation before he stepped down last week.
“Frankly, it wouldn’t fix the problem. The problem is much broader than that. It goes to middle management in some cases,” Hamilton said. “It’s time for Congress to do their jobs. They have the purse strings. They can allocate funds.”
Hamilton said the VFW plans to take stories from the town hall to elected leaders who can help sort out the problems. Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback already has asked the Department of Veterans Affairs to allow state oversight of VA facilities.
JEFFERSON CITY (AP) – Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon is getting ready to wield his veto pen.
Nixon has scheduled a news conference Wednesday afternoon to discuss vetoes of several bills approved by the Legislature this year.
The Democratic governor has said previously that he likely will veto bills granting special tax breaks to a variety of industries, including computer data centers, electric companies and restaurants.
Nixon has said the tax breaks could bust a hole in the budget by reducing state revenues by as much as $425 million annually.
Republican legislative leaders have disputed those figures. They have defended some of the tax breaks as mere clarifications of policies that they contend have been incorrectly applied by the Missouri Department of Revenue.
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon has signed legislation that calls for the state Revenue Department to use electronic records.
The bill gives the agency until 2021 to develop a system for making available in electronic formats all documents and forms that it provides to the public. The Revenue Department also would need to allow for electronic submission of documents.
Nixon signed the bill law Tuesday, saying it represents another step toward making state services efficient and accessible.
KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) — The University of Kansas Hospital has received a $2 million donation toward construction of a 92-bed building on its campus in Kansas City, Kansas.
The grant from the Sunderland Foundation was announced Tuesday by foundation president Kent Sunderland and Charles Sunderland, chairman of Ash Grove Cement.
The new facility will be home to the hospital’s neurosurgery and surgical oncology services. The hospital said in a news release that services in those areas have grown nearly 40 percent over the past five years.
Hospital officials have said they hope to raise $100 million in donations for the project. Gifts announced earlier include $1 million from Deanna and Greg Graves and $2.5 million from the Burns & McDonnell Foundation.
MOULTRIE, Ga. (AP) — Aerial drones, a technology perhaps best known for helping hunt terrorists on the other side of the globe, may soon begin helping U.S. farmers monitor what’s happening in their fields.
In Georgia, a group of state and federal officials — along with members of industry and academia — has been working since 2009 to develop a drone that can save a farmer’s time and resources during the growing season.
The public got its first glimpse of the group’s drone at a flight demonstration last month at a research farm in Moultrie, Georgia.
By deploying a UAV with a multi-spectral camera to survey crops, farmers could spot water and nutrition issues, insect infestations and fungal infections.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — A Missouri trooper has returned to work after a handcuffed Iowa man drowned while in his custody on the Lake of the Ozarks.
Anthony Piercy had been placed on administrative leave after the May 31 incident. The Kansas City Star reports he returned to work Monday while the Highway Patrol continues to investigate.
Piercy had arrested 20-year-old Brandon Ellingson on suspicion of boating while intoxicated. Ellingson was taken into a boat, placed in a life vest and handcuffed behind his back.
Piercy was taking him for a field sobriety test when the incident report indicates Ellingson stood up, stepped to the boat’s edge and fell or jumped overboard. Ellingson’s life vest came off. His body was recovered June 1.
HOLT- Two women were injured in a Tuesday crash in Clinton County.
The Missouri State Highway Patrol reported a 2000 Plymouth Voyager driven by Serenity L. Payne, 20, Independence was westbound on Route PP three miles east of Holt. The driver lost control on the wet road. The vehicle traveled off the north side of the road, struck an embankment and overturned.
Payne and a passenger in the Plymouth Marissa J. Harrell, 20, Kansas City were transported to Liberty Hospital
The MSHP reported they were properly restrained at the time of the accident.
LENEXA—A wet highway is being blamed for a Tuesday accident in Johnson County that sent two men to the hospital.
The Kansas Highway Patrol reported a 2005 Jeep Grand Cherokee driven by Derrick Brown, 50, Lee’s Summit, MO., was eastbound on Kansas 10 in Lenexa. The driver lost control due to the wet roadway, went through the center median and into the west bound lanes.
A 2008 Toyota FJ Cruiser, driven by Samuel Finley, Jr., Overland Park, hit the Jeep. That forced the Toyota into a 2007 Kenworth semi-truck.
Brown and Finley were transported to Overland Park Regional Medical Center. The truck driver and 2 passengers in the Toyota were not injured.
The KHP reported everyone was properly restrained at the time of the accident.
COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP) — The University of Missouri’s flagship campus in Columbia is boosting its efforts to fight sexual assault.
The Columbia Daily Tribune (bit.ly/1xEcDkZ ) reports that the university plans to hire a full-time Title IX coordinator as well as a full-time investigator. Responsibility for overseeing the school’s compliance with the federal law prohibiting sex discrimination in education had previously been handled on a part-time basis by an administrator with other duties.
Chancellor R. Bowen Loftin announced the hires Tuesday. In April, he vowed to make the school “accountable and responsible” after an independent review by an outside law firm faulted its response to the suicide of a former swimmer who told health professionals before her death that she had been raped by several football players.
LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) — After 25 years, the Douglas County AIDS Project plans to close.
