rural doctors

Missouri officials have proposed cutting tens of millions of dollars in services for people with disabilities. And Montana halted a plan to pay for birthing doulas amid a budget shortfall and fears over coming federal Medicaid cuts.

Voters around Kansas City went to the polls yesterday, and we'll break down the elections. Plus: A community health center in southeast Kansas is working on solving rural health workforce shortages by introducing elementary schoolers to... frog dissections.

Sedalia's newest effort to help its most vulnerable residents appears to be a win: a building with the area’s most crucial social service providers all under one roof, available throughout the week on a walk-in basis. It's part of a Missouri pilot program to better serve rural communities.

Missouri received the ninth-largest award of any state from the federal Rural Health Transformation Program, part of the GOP spending law passed by Congress over the summer. But it still amounts to less than a third of what rural areas will lose from reduced Medicaid spending.

In rural Medicine Lodge, Kansas, Sarrah and Kyle Miller were sued last month by their local medical clinic for $230 in unpaid medical expenses. Their story is part of a new pattern. Kansas hospitals have filed thousands of lawsuits against their rural patients in recent years, including many for less than $500.

Nurse practitioners and midwives have been pushing to get the law changed in Missouri, but haven’t made any progress. Now, one Columbia nurse is suing the state.

Patients sometimes find themselves scrambling for affordable care when their insurer and hospital can't agree. That's what happened to Columbia, Missouri, resident Amber Wingler after MU Health Care got into a contract dispute with Anthem.

Conspiracy theories about health fill a vacuum created by the lack of doctors in Kansas and many other rural communities. Meanwhile, doctors say patients have become increasingly distrustful and sometimes hostile.

In western Kansas, rural hospitals have been closing or are perpetually understaffed, leaving residents to drive anywhere from an hour to multiple hours for doctors appointments. Plus: Scientists are working on a new framework that factors climate trends into how we think about drought.

A new analysis shows that students graduating from U.S. medical schools were less likely to apply this year for residencies across specialties in states with restrictions on abortion, such as Missouri and Kansas.

Many hospitals are shuttering their labor and delivery units because insurance companies and Medicaid aren't reimbursing hospitals enough to cover the cost of births.

After three years of free-to-ride public buses, the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority is thinking about charging fares again. Plus: Large areas of Missouri and Kansas are without primary care doctors, but many hope that medical students just starting their careers will help remedy that.