MPR is often asked questions about the Kansas Health Care Stabilization Fund. To keep things simple, we’ll refer to it simply as “The Fund.” The Fund was established when Kansas health care providers were confronted with medical professional liability problems in the mid-1970s that resulted from changes in the legal, medical, social, and economic environments.
These environments created problems in the availability of health care and the cost of medical professional liability was impacted. The Kansas Health Care Provider Insurance Availability Act was established.
The Fund was established for the following reasons:
- Provided excess professional liability coverage for defined health care providers
- Mandated a basic professional liability insurance requirement for defined health care providers
- Established an Availability Plan to provide the required basic professional liability insurance for providers who could not obtain such coverage from commercial insurers
Any profession or facility defined as a “health care provider” under K.S.A. 40-3401 is required to comply with the Fund. Specified professional licensed to practice in Kansas; chiropractors, nurse anesthetists, nurse midwives, physicians, physician assistants, and podiatrists are required to comply with the Fund as a condition of active licensure.
Telehealth providers who read images, read slides, or otherwise provide telemedicine services to a patient located in Kansas are required to have an active license to render professional services in Kansas regardless of location. In these cases, the provider must also comply with Kansas laws governing professional liability insurance and participation in the Health Care Stabilization Fund coverage.
In credentialing health care providers, we are concerned with two different aspects of the Kansas Health Care Stabilization Fund. First is compliance. We want to know if the practitioner is complying with the requirements of the Fund. Secondly, we want to address the claims history of the provider. We write to both the primary insurance carrier for a claims history, and we also request a claims history from the Fund. We compare the claims histories to the National Practitioner Data Bank report and any discrepancies are revealed in the final quality check of each initial appointment and reappointment file.
Further information on the Fund can be found on their website at https://hcsf.kansas.gov/
