The Neosho County commission’s recent decision to deny the Southeast Kansas Mental Health Center a letter of support sets a troubling precedent.
Last week, commissioners justified their concern over executive salaries as a way to punish SEKMHC in their application to become a Health Center Program Look-Alike at their Chanute and Yates Center locations.
We understand the commission’s discomfort with SEKMHC’s executive salaries, and the nonprofit owes transparency, and an explanation, to taxpayers. There’s work to be done to rebuild trust and establish accountability. This issue won’t just disappear, and it shouldn’t.
But hamstringing the nonprofit’s ability to deliver needed services helps no one. And if commissioners seek to hold the right people to account, this is far off the mark.
In applying for a Look-Alike designation, the mental health center seeks to serve more Neosho and Woodson county residents. “Its enduring value is that it expands on our mission to truly serve everyone,” SEKMHC CEO Nathan Fawson told the Register.
CREATED BY Congress, Health Center Program Look-Alikes are designed to provide primary care services in underserved areas. No federal grant dollars are awarded. They use a sliding fee scale for services, offer free vaccines to children with no or substandard insurance, and offer prescription drug discounts via the 340B program.
Though you’d hardly know it based on last Monday’s conversation, Neosho and Woodson counties could benefit from such services.
The 2025 County Health Rankings & Roadmaps, released earlier this year by the University of Wisconsin and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, shows Neosho County with a primary care physician rate of 63 per 100,000 residents, well below the state average of 78. Neosho County has about half the number of dentists per population compared to the state average, and almost double the number of preventable hospital stays.
Even with SEKMHC’s existing presence in Neosho County, residents there have about a third of the mental health providers per population compared to the country as a whole. The health disparities in Woodson County are just as severe.
THESE ARE just the type of problems Federally Qualified Health Centers and Health Center Program Look-Alikes were designed to solve. Commissioners can be upset about SEKMHC’s executive pay. They should raise those concerns at board meetings and directly with Fawson and his team.
But elected leaders neglecting to help expand healthcare access to their own constituents? The medical term for that is malpractice.
— Tim Stauffer and Susan Lynn
