Kansas promises better care for Osawatomie psychiatric patients after federal inspection

Kansas is promising to provide more treatment to some psychiatric patients after federal inspectors found problems with care at Osawatomie State Hospital and threatened to pull funding.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) earlier this month told officials at Osawatomie that it planned to cut off Medicare payments to its 60-bed Adair Acute Care unit early next year without improvements. An unannounced inspection in November had found numerous issues that “substantially limit the hospital’s capacity to render adequate care and services,” the federal agency said.

Inspectors said treatment plans lacked specific goals, that notes were missing or didn’t have enough detail and that treatment for some patients needed to be more frequent and intense.

In response, Osawatomie said treatment plans will be individualized for each patient. At least 10 percent of active patient charts will be reviewed each week for accuracy. And all plans will comply with regulations by Jan. 10.

Additionally, clinical group leaders will attempt to provide patients who miss group therapy sessions with more one-on-one contact. Inspectors had said failure to provide treatment intense enough for some patients could lead to delays in patient improvement or end with patients leaving the hospital “without the necessary skills to prevent relapse.”

“(Hospital) staff are dedicated and committed to providing excellent care to their patients day in and day out and their greatest priority is the health and safety of every person they treat. As early as the day after the survey, staff and leadership were meeting to develop plans to better document progress,” KDADS spokeswoman Cara Sloan-Ramos said in a statement.

CMS late last week accepted Osawatomie’s plan to correct the problems. The Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services provided a copy of the plan on Monday.