Several advisory councils to the Kansas Health Policy Authority have been put on hold for the summer.
The agency’s At-Large, Consumer, Purchaser, and Provider advisory councils were scheduled to meet throughout June and July, but were cancelled, said Peter Hancock, public information officer for the health policy authority.
About 150 health care providers, purchasers, consumers, private citizens and other stakeholders serve on the volunteer councils, which began meeting in 2007 to provide input to the health policy authority as it developed its first major health reform plan.
The health policy authority announced last week that a 15 percent cut in its budget was forcing it to eliminate positions, a move that agency officials said would affect the processing of Medicaid and State Children’s Health Insurance Program paperwork.
Officials have also said they plan to eliminate the agency’s stand-alone legislative and policy division, to which the advisory councils had reported.
“The advisory councils have been very valuable to us in the past,” Hancock said. “At the moment, we are focused on making the changes necessary to stay within our budget, which starts on July 1.”
The health policy authority’s board will meet June 16 and 17 to discuss the impact of the budget cuts on the agency’s operations, including the future of the advisory councils, Hancock said.
“We’ll need to discuss with our board the agency’s role in convening and coordinating stakeholder input,” he said. “We wanted to wait until after the board meeting to schedule the remaining meetings for the year.”
Sen. Laura Kelly, D-Topeka, a member of the Joint Committee on Health Policy Oversight and the Senate’s health and budget committees, said the councils were among the latest victims of the state’s budget crisis.
“The Legislature has, whether by design or just fiat, really, told the health policy authority that policies have to take a back seat right now to services, applications and to payments — those kinds of operations,” she said. “I don’t know how we can expect that agency to continue everything they were doing before when we have such drastic cuts.”
If and when the Legislature is able to restore the agency’s funding so that it can resume its policy functions, Kelly said, it should reconvene the councils.
“They’ve always been anxious to get input, and they understand not only the need for it to guide them, but they also understand the political reality of having stakeholders around the table,” she said. “But if you just don’t have the resources to do the policy, why would you have the folks coming in?”
Health policy authority programs aren’t the only ones that will have less consumer input, Kelly said.
“I expect that the Legislature won’t be convening as many interim meetings and advisory committees — we don’t have the money either,” she said. “This will be one of the fall-outs. It is not free and costless to get public input. That can backfire on you, but it’s the reality of the situation we find ourselves in now.
Janet Williams, president of communityworks, inc., an Overland Park-based provider of home and community based services, serves as the chairwoman of the Provider Council.
Williams said she wasn’t surprised that the councils were being re-evaluated.
“When we first convened, we thought it would be for a year,” she said. “They asked us to stay on past that. I thought we had been on an on-call basis anyway.”
Williams spoke highly of the councils and their roles in the health reform process.
“It’s a great group,” she said. “I think the input has been helpful. There are people from hospitals on there, pharmaceuticals, physicians. I think it’s been great for them to have that dialog from the council, and I know I’ve learned a lot from that.”
Corrie Edwards, executive director of the Kansas Health Consumer Coalition, said the groups made a substantial contribution to the 21-point reform plan presented to the 2008 Legislature, although few of those recommendations were approved by the Legislature.
The health policy authority scaled back its recommendations for the 2009 Legislature, choosing only a few items instead of a broad health reform package.
“Two years ago I felt like we were really, thoroughly used to the best of our abilities,” Edwards said. “Last year, I felt it was really a rubber-stamp situation. I’m hoping they’ll go back to the drawing table to figure out how to use us more effectively.
Rep. Bob Bethell, R-Alden, chairman of the House Aging and Long-Term Care Committee and a member of the Joint Committee on Health Policy Oversight, said he would encourage the health policy authority to continue the dialogue with stakeholders affected by their programs and policies.
“I think the more people you can have involved, the better off we are,” he said. “Many minds are much better than one mind. The easiest thing in the world to solve a problem is to get to the people who are experiencing that problem.”
-Sarah Green is a staff writer for KHI News Service, which specializes in coverage of health issues facing Kansans. She can be reached at sgreen@khi.org or at 785-233-5443, ext. 118.