There was a great article in the Kansas City Star this morning about the Medicaid Appeals partnership that Legal Aid of Western Missouri has with Truman Medical Center.
http://www.kansascity.com/2012/10/04/3848419/alan-bavley-hed-like-to-lose-this.html
As the article pointed out, the project has gotten more than
1,000 Truman patients who are permanently and totally disabled access to
long-term, proactive medical care. It has also generated more than $11 million in sorely needed
revenues for Truman.
The article, however, failed to mention the tremendous team
that does this work. Effie
Day as Project Director and Stacy Schaub as Supervising Attorney of the Public
Benefits teams have done excellent work in making sure that when Truman’s
patients are wrongly turned down for Medicaid, they have the best possible
representation they can have to make sure that they get the benefits they
deserve. And the same
holds true when the patients come from our other referral partners, including
K.C. Free Health, KU Medical Center and St. Luke’s Hospital, as well as when
the wrongfully denied client just calls us on the phone.
The fact that Legal Aid wins more than 85% of all of the
Medicaid Appeals cases is the result of the excellent work of everyone on Legal
Aid’s Public Benefits team, including the case handlers: Effie Day; Stacy Schaub; Karen Karnes; Katie Wood; Maura Weber; and,
Megan Simpson and our talented paralegals: Tracie Griddine and Kim Morris,
along with the team’s legal secretary—Sandy Kincaid.
We also could not get the results we get at Truman without
the excellent work of the Financial Counseling Center staff, the assistance of
the social workers and medical staff at Truman and the support of Lydia Jones
and Bill Colby who oversee the project at Truman.
It’s a wonderful project and the true credit should go to
the front line staff who get the job done.