February 05, 2013 –
From left to right: Bill Thorne (PBPN Health Center Administrator), Vivien Olsen (PBPN Attorney), Steve Ortiz (PBPN Tribal Chairman), Carrie O’Toole (PBPN Tribal Council Member), and Kari Bruffet(KDHE Director) during a Tribal Technical Advisory Group meeting today at the Curtis Building in Topeka.
MAYETTA: Tribal leaders and staff from the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation (PBPN) traveled to Topeka this morning to attend a Tribal Technical Advisory Group meeting at the Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE). The group met with Kari Bruffet, KDHE director, and heard from other representatives from the Kansas tribes and Indian health centers, who participated in the discussion via a conference call.
The Tribal Technical Advisory group was formed last year as a way to involve the Kansas tribes with Gov. Sam Brownback’s Medicaid makeover program called KanCare. KanCare began on Jan. 1 that moved the state’s almost 380,000 Medicaid enrollees into three managed-care companies called Ameri-group, United HealthCare and Sunflower State Health Plan. Several Native Americans are in the state’s KanCare program and the purpose of the meeting was to offer an update and exchange of how things are going.