Just the Facts
As a statewide leader in managed care, Sunflower Health Plan wants you to know the facts about the important programs we offer. Click on the questions below to learn about the role managed care organizations (MCOs) have in providing healthcare to people in Kansas.
Sunflower Health Plan is a managed care organization (MCO) that provides healthcare services to more than 200,000 members in Kansas. These services include medical, dental, vision, pharmacy and behavioral health. Since 2013, Sunflower has served members in all 105 Kansas counties.
Most of Sunflower Health Plan's members get healthcare through government-sponsored programs. Sunflower works with the Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE) to bring members benefits in the KanCare program.
Sunflower also provides healthcare coverage through the health insurance marketplace and Medicare Advantage.
An independent third-party research company has conducted annual surveys of Sunflower's LTSS members since 2017. Year over year, the metric of general satisfaction has consistently been above 95 percent.
The survey, conducted through SPH Analytics, is sent annually to more than 10,000 Sunflower members receiving home and community based services (HCBS). Members answer questions about their care coordinators, feelings of being respected, quality of life, Sunflower transportation services and more.
Sunflower shares the survey results with its LTSS Advisory Committee, LTSS Quality Assurance Committee and community partners to innovate ways to improve services for members.
Sunflower employs an array of interventions recommended by these advisory and quality committees to meet the specific needs of its members in LTSS. Some of these include:
- Transition Coordination: Sunflower offers enhanced transition services for persons moving from a nursing facility, focusing on safe and successful placements.
- Transportation to Community Activities: Sunflower offers this value-added service to persons in certain HCBS waivers to help them engage more in their chosen community activities.
- Person Centered Thinking and LifeCourse: Some Sunflower employees are certified in person-centered thinking training, and one is participating in workgroups to further develop training for Charting the LifeCourse. These are two models of person-centered goal planning that Sunflower is implementing to better help members set goals that will improve their quality of life.
- Caregiving Collaborations®: This program helps support our members indirectly by providing resources for the people who care about and for them.
- Employment Support: Sunflower has multiple programs that support our members' rights and abilities to be employed.
- Extra Support during COVID-19: Sunflower provided personal protective equipment, tablet computers, food assistance and other support during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The survey was conducted with people in the following types of Medicaid LTSS services:
- Brain Injury (BI)
- Technology Assisted (TA)
- Intellectual/Developmental Disabilities (IDD)
- Physical Disability(PD)
- Frail Elderly (FE)
- Autism (AU)
- Serious Emotional Disturbance (SED)
- Work Opportunities Reward Kansans (WORK)
The term LTSS refers to a spectrum of institutional or community-based health and individualized living services that support elders or people with disabilities who need help with daily living tasks. The State of Kansas Medicaid agency contracts with Sunflower to provide assessment and coordination of services for members receiving LTSS and medical and behavioral health services in the managed-care program named KanCare.
Sunflower believes each member deserves an individualized approach to their healthcare. We have committed to improving the health of the community one individual at a time through affordable and reliable health care plans.
We do this through our focus on the individual, whole health and local involvement.
- Focus on individuals. We believe treating people with kindness, respect and dignity empowers healthy decisions and that healthier individuals create more vibrant families and communities.
- Whole health. We believe in treating the whole person, not just the physical body.
- Active local involvement. We believe local partnerships enable meaningful, accessible healthcare.
There are many resources that can be used to learn more about the role Sunflower and managed care have played to provide healthcare to some of the most vulnerable people in Kansas. These include: