Medicare

Sayre, Oklahoma is about to get loud. The 5th Annual Wild Plum Jam kicks off Friday, July 17, at Historic Sayre City Park, bringing a bona fide Texas country double bill to the Panhandle stretch of Route 66 as part of the town's Dust Bowl Days Festival weekend.

This hour-long special features a discussion of Will Rogers' time growing up in Oklahoma, and his time traversing Route 66 as his fame grew

Event to be hosted by Area Agency on Aging of the Panhandle

The Wasteful and Inappropriate Service Reduction Model, or WISeR, is being tested in six states, including Oklahoma, starting this month.

The Center for Healthcare Quality & Payment Reform, a national policy organization, found 68 rural Kansas hospitals are at risk of closing, including 30 at immediate risk. Revenue isn't keeping up with costs.

Texas is set to receive the largest award from the federal Rural Health Transformation Program — with federal officials awarding $1.4 billion to the state over five years. The state received millions more in funding that it asked for in its application.

Alongside the passage of billions of dollars in Medicaid spending reductions over a decade, Oklahoma is also vying for an opportunity available to all 50 states to fund sustainable rural health care initiatives.

As Texas develops its application for federal Rural Health Transformation Program funding, rural hospital leaders say stabilizing their facilities should be a top priority. "Without it, all the planning in the world will not matter because there will be no hospital left to transform," one said.

A new report by Oklahoma’s Division of Government Efficiency lays out several major policy shifts for the state. Ideas include eliminating $157 million of federal health care support, much to the consternation of policy experts and some Republicans.

Officials with Medicare have decided to cover an innovative but extremely expensive cancer treatment, setting the stage for more patients to get it....