NORTON, Kan. (AP) — A statewide shortage of trained medical personnel has left many rural county ambulance services having to delay hospital transfers to ensure they have enough staff for emergencies.

For example, in Norton County in northwest Kansas, the county’s 5,400 residents are served by six full-time volunteers and nine volunteers, who respond to all 911 calls and taken patients from one hospital to another.

“Sometimes patients needing to be transferred are left waiting,” said Craig Sowards, Norton County EMS director.

In response to the problem, a proposal before the state Legislature would allow drivers without medical training to transport stable patients in rural areas, which sometimes can take hours. Ambulances would still need to have one person with medical training riding in the back, such as an EMT or a nurse, The Kansas News Service reports .

Some state and local EMS officials say having only one trained person on board could be risky, and they worry about lowering standards of care in rural areas.

“Occasionally patients decline and it’s often helpful to have an extra set of hands to stabilize (patients) before they move on,” said David Johnston, president of the Kansas Emergency Medical Services Association.

Joe House, executive director of the Kansas Board of Emergency Medical Services, defended current regulations that require two medically trained workers on board, including the driver.

“We write our regulations to protect the public’s well-being and safety,” House said. “It’s either safe to do or not safe to do.”

Emergency medical services are competing with clinics, hospitals and schools for trained personnel — and offer a starting wage of only about $21,000 a year, House said.

Many rural ambulance services rely on certified volunteers. Phillips County in northwest Kansas has 84 volunteers to serve a population just under 5,400 but the number drops significantly in surrounding counties.

Pete Rogers, EMS director for Phillips County, said he can’t imagine operating ambulances without two medically trained personnel on board.

“If you have somebody that’s simply a driver and you still have two technicians in the back of the truck with the patient then, then I, I see absolutely no problems with it,” he said. “But I would be concerned if it was a non-certified person driving and only one technician in the back.”

In Norton County, Sowards doesn’t think it’s necessary to have two trained EMS workers for stabilized transfers.

“I’ve been in EMS for 20 years running transfers — maybe once in 20 years I’ve had to have a driver come help,” he said, adding allowing non-certified ambulance drivers for transfers “could help a lot.”

By STEPHEN KORANDA

The Republican-controlled Kansas House approved wide-ranging tax legislation Thursday. The measure would reduce sales taxes on food, which could help Kansans across the income spectrum. It would also give some big corporations a break, and that will likely spark a showdown with Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly.

Senate leaders introduced the initial version of the bill earlier this session in response to the federal tax overhaul of 2017. They pushed for the legislation to allow Kansans to continue itemizing on their state taxes even if they no longer do so on their federal returns because of larger standard deductions. They also wanted to free Kansas businesses from owing state taxes on overseas income that Congress incentivized them to repatriate.

Supporters of the proposal in both the Senate and the House said without it the federal tax cuts would trigger a state tax increase on businesses and people who itemize.

Opponents argued it amounts to a tax break for big business and the wealthy and would prompt the state to forfeit an estimated $400 million in revenue over the next three years just as its finances are stabilizing.

“I understand the temptation to keep the money,” Republican state Rep. Les Mason said during the House debate Thursday. “Are we going to do the right thing? Are we going to get this money back to the rightful owners?”

To make the legislation more palatable, House lawmakers bundled in a provision to cut the sales tax by 1 percentage point, which alone would lower state tax collections by around $175 million over three years. Another added provision would offset that some by collecting more from online purchases, raising an estimated $88 million during that time.

If lawmakers advance it with another vote, the bill will head to negotiations between the chambers to reconcile the changes made by the House.

Gov. Kelly hasn’t explicitly threatened to veto the bill, but she has said that tax cuts should not be a priority right now. Instead, she said the Legislature should come up with the money to satisfy the Kansas Supreme Court that school funding is adequate.

“It is time to put the priorities of Kansas families first and fund our schools,” she said last month. “With a Supreme Court deadline fast approaching, the Legislature should be focusing on education, not another irresponsible tax plan.”

The state’s finances are on solid ground since lawmakers reversed many of the tax cuts passed in 2012. But, Kelly has said making major tax changes could cause a repeat of the fiscal troubles Kansas faced during former Gov. Sam Brownback’s tenure.

In a way, the internet tax collections and food sales taxes are a political dare legislators may drop in front of Kelly. The food sales tax cut and internet sales tax provisions appear quite popular and they could be used to pressure her to sign the bill into law or stoke criticism if she vetoes it.

“It’s all about the hate of our governor,” Democratic state Rep. Cindy Neighbor said on the House floor. “It’s time to quit playing party politics.”

Reducing the food sales tax has broad support as a way to benefit lower-income Kansans, but it never happens because of the huge financial cost to the state budget.

Some House members blasted the bill for only cutting the state food sales tax from 6.5 to 5.5 percent. Local sales taxes further raise the rate.

Uncertainty over the cost of the bill is also a sticking point, with supporters and opponents alike questioning the accuracy of the estimates.

“It’s a shot in the dark,” Republican Senate President Susan Wagle said earlier in the session. She wondered aloud how much Kansas could stand to lose if the legislation doesn’t pass and businesses leave the state for a more favorable tax climate.

The uncertainty is exactly why Democrat Jim Gartner opposed it Thursday in the House. Without knowing the true cost, he said the bill could put the state in dire financial straits if the country enters a recession.

“What are we doing?” he asked on the floor. “We have no data. No concrete data.”

Stephen Koranda is Statehouse reporter for the Kansas News Service. Follow him on Twitter @kprkoranda.

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — A central Missouri man who admitted shooting at officers and tractor-trailers during an Interstate 70 police chase has been sentenced to 30 years in federal prison.

Russell Deane Moore Jr. of Fulton was sentenced Tuesday. He pleaded guilty in December to two counts of destruction of a motor vehicle, one count of unlawful transport of firearms and one count of receiving stolen firearms.

The April 2016 chase started when a stolen Jeep was spotted at a Columbia truck stop. Moore shot at Boone County deputies and tractor-trailers in an effort to cause a serious accident that would stop the pursuit. The chase ended when the Jeep ran out of gas.

No deputies or truck drivers were injured.

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (AP) — Former NFL wide receiver Dorial Green-Beckham has been sentenced to 90 days in jail after a Missouri judge ruled that a marijuana arrest amounted to probation violation.

Green-Beckham was sentenced Friday.

Springfield police say Green-Beckham had marijuana in his pocket after jumping from a home window while officers were executing a search warrant in December. No charges were filed, but Judge Jerry Harmison ruled that the arrest was a violation of probation in Green-Beckham’s 2017 driving while intoxicated case.

Green-Beckham’s attorney, Tyson Martin, asked for treatment or counseling instead of jail time.

Green-Beckham played two years at Missouri and was a second-round pick of the Tennessee Titans in 2015. He was traded to the Philadelphia Eagles and cut before the 2017 season.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — The Kansas Supreme Court has denied a 37-year-old Kansas woman’s appeal of her conviction for killing her son.

Lindsey Blansett was convicted of first-degree murder and aggravated assault in the December 2014 death of her son, Caleb, in Wellington. Prosecutors said she beat him with a rock and stabbed him to death. She was given a Hard 25 sentence.

Prosecutors argued during Blansett’s trial that she killed her son to spare him from suffering. Her defense argued she was mentally ill at the time and believed people were coming to her house to hurt Caleb.

Blansett’s appeal argued jury instructions not to consider her mental illness were erroneous.

The state Supreme Court said the instructions didn’t prevent the jury from considering how Blansett’s mental illness affected her ability to premeditate the crime.

WICHITA, KAN. – Wichita physician Steven R. Henson was sentenced today to life in federal prison for unlawfully distributing prescription drugs, according to U.S. Attorney Stephen McAllister.

“I want this case to send a message to physicians and the health care community,” McAllister said. “Unlawfully distributing opioids and other controlled substances is a federal crime that could end a medical career and send an offender to prison.”

McAllister continued: “We are dealing with an epidemic. Nationwide, more than 70,000 Americans died in 2017 from drug overdoses. That is more than all the American casualties during the war in Vietnam.”

Henson, 57, operated the Kansas Men’s Clinic at 3636 N. Ridge Road in Wichita, stood trial in October and was convicted on the following counts:Conspiracy to distribute prescription drugs outside the course of medical practice (Counts 1 and 2). Unlawfully distributing oxycodone (Counts 3 through 14). Unlawfully distributing oxycodone, methadone and alprazolam (Count 16). Unlawfully distributing methadone and alprazolam, the use of which resulted in the death of a victim on July 24, 2015, identified in court records as N.M. (Count 17)
Presenting false patient records to investigators (Count 19). Obstruction of justice (Count 20) Money laundering (Counts 26 through 31).

Evidence at trial showed Henson was giving dangerous, maximum strength opioid prescriptions to people who did not need them.

Henson was registered with the Drug Enforcement Administration to dispense prescription controlled substances. His registered addresses included the Wichita Men’s Clinic and a location at 1861 N. Rock Road, Suite 201.

During trial, prosecutors presented evidence that Henson: Wrote prescriptions without a medical need. Wrote prescriptions in return for cash. Post-dated prescriptions.Wrote prescriptions without a legitimate medical exam and wrote prescriptions for people other than the ones who came to see him.

U.S. District Judge J. Thomas Marten wrote in an order denying the defendant’s motion for acquittal: “The defendant kept no medical records, performed no physical examinations or physical tests, gave massive amounts of opioids to patients with little demonstrated need, wrote unneeded, non-controlled prescriptions in order to defeat pharmacy limits on controlled substances, and knew that patients were traveling improbably long distances to receive opioids. There was ample evidence that Henson was prescribing opioid medications in amounts likely to lead to addiction, and in amounts so expensive that the patients would likely be forced by economic circumstances to support their addiction by selling some of the drugs to others.”

The judge criticized Henson for deliberately not confronting the fact his patients were addicts. He had a uniform, scripted colloquy with patients in which he asked them if they had pain, they said yes and then he gave them prescriptions. In that way, he avoided asking more questions or ordering more tests. Marten called it, “a pantomime of a genuine doctor-patient relationship (that) demonstrated a consistent policy of avoiding the truth.”

Evidence presented at trial showed Henson prescribed opioid medications in amounts likely to lead to addiction and ignored the risk that his patients would pay for their drugs by selling some of the drugs to other people.

McAllister said: “The prosecution of cases involving a health professional’s misuse of medical expertise and authority is extremely important to fight the opioid epidemic. The vast majority of health care providers are people of integrity who follow their oath to help others, abide by the law, and do all they can to protect patients from becoming addicted. The evidence showed that is not what Dr. Henson did in this case.”

“For any doctors, pharmacists or nurses who disregard their oath and distribute powerful drugs illegally to enrich themselves, the message today is that they will be prosecuted to the full extent allowed by federal law.”

f=”https://www.apnews.com/447fec23322240d89089f9e2395de232″>her proposal to reduce Kansas’ annual contributions to its public pension system probably won’t pass the Republican-controlled Legislature this year.

But Kelly said Friday that the state “absolutely” must revise its schedule of payments to the Kansas Public Employees Retirement System.

She added, “I think the Legislature knows that.”

Republicans have said her plan is unwise. The House rejected it last month.

By law, the state must ramp up contributions to close a long-term KPERS funding gap by 2035. Kelly proposed giving the state an extra 15 years to create budget breathing room.

Kelly’s comments Friday came after she signed a bill for an immediate, $115 million payment to KPERS. It repays with interest a contribution skipped in 2016 because of budget problems.