A hospital in Kansas will no longer receive Medicare payments after a decision by federal officials Dec. 18.
Officials with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, or CMS, had announced they would cut funding to the Osawatomie State Hospital in a report issued last month, but agreed to a follow up inspection of the healthcare facility Dec. 15 to reevaluate their ruling.
The follow up inspection led officials to go forward with the cuts, although CMS documents don’t detail the results of the inspections, according to kcur.org.
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Among the initial findings by CMS were security deficiencies in part discovered after the alleged rape of a hospital employee by a patient on Oct. 27. CMS security concerns included inadequate nursing staff levels, the failure of security staff to perform mandatory safety checks and insufficient supervision in areas with potentially suicidal patients.
In response to the findings the hospital issued a corrective action plan that would require nurse managers to increase their supervision of floor activities and complete patient risk assessments, as well as retraining nurses and security staff and teaching staff members to use personal alarm devices.
Osawatomie State Hospital is one of two state-run inpatient treatment facilities for patients with severe mental illness. Osawatomie can hold 206 patients normally, but currently is under renovations that only allow it to hold 146.
