healthcare

The Kansas City region added an estimated 12,800 jobs in 2026, nearly triple that of 2025, with the healthcare and construction industries gaining the most. But the number of people in the workforce actually shrank.

New federal work requirements for Medicaid enrollees are set to go into effect. Some states, like Nebraska, have already implemented the changes. The Midwest Newsroom wants to hear from Medicaid recipients and providers about their experiences.

A federal judge ruled last month that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services improperly narrowed the circumstances under which sick people are exempt from work requirements, a decision that could affect more than 100,000 Missourians, attorneys say. A similar lawsuit involving a Kansas City resident is making its way through the courts at the same time.

Nurses want Kansas City’s largest healthcare system to increase security at hospitals. The demands follow the shooting death of a visitor at Centerpoint Medical Center in Independence, Missouri. The suspect charged in the death was a patient at the hospital at the time of the shooting.

Once Children’s Mercy hospital becomes out of network for her family, Christy Moreno may have to seek specialty treatment in Mexico or Canada. She says the cancellation of the family’s insurance has put her child in a life-or-death situation.

The campaign to defend access to transgender healthcare for young people in Missouri is taking an unhurried approach to talking with voters about the proposed ban. Amendment 3 would also restrict abortion again in the state.

A new surgery center in Independence will focus on Medicaid patients. It’s emblematic of progress improving oral health access in the state.

Supporters say the proposed ban protects women facing medical emergencies and survivors of sexual assault. Critics question whether those protections would work in practice.

Missouri has some of the strictest policies for certified nurse-midwives, requiring they get physician supervision, collaboration or sign-off. A group of advocates who gathered in Kansas City says granting them full-practice authority would boost the local workforce and expand options and access to healthcare.

The end of enhanced subsidies for Affordable Care Act plans is adding to the tally of uninsured patients. New Medicaid requirements coming in January could be a multiplier.

A New York Times report found that Republican U.S. Sen. Roger Marshall, of Kansas, sued hundreds of his patients over medical debt when he was practicing medicine in the western part of the state.

More than 700 patients were sued by a doctor in western Kansas for medical debt. The doctor is now Republican U.S. Sen. Roger Marshall, who for decades was a practicing obstetrician-gynecologist.