CITY SHOWDOWN: FREE STATE, LHS FACE OFF Rivals ready for anticipated game; girls at 5:15 p.m., boys at 7 p.m. at Lawrence High 1B
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City faces doctor shortage
Faculty, staff respond to policy ———
Regents’ social media decision ‘vague,’ some say By Ben Unglesbee and Scott Rothschild bunglesbee@ljworld.com, srothschild@ljworld.com Nick Krug/Journal-World Photo
FAMILY DOCTOR BONNIE CRAMER CHECKS PATIENT CASSIE MAYO’S lymph nodes during a visit on Thursday at Family Medicine of Baldwin City, 406 Ames St. Cramer is among the newest of Lawrence Memorial Hospital’s recruits.
Lawrence makes little progress in recruiting family physicians By Giles Bruce gbruce@ljworld.com
Lawrence continues to face a longterm shortage of primary care doctors, despite efforts to recruit them to the community. The number of family practice and internal medicine doctors in Lawrence each increased by just one from 2008 to 2013. “When you look at who’s leaving, who’s retiring, who’s moving, who’s going part time — we have really made almost no progress,” Sherri Vaughn, a
family doctor who recruits physicians for Lawrence Memorial Hospital, told the hospital’s Board of Trustees at a recent meeting. “It’s a daunting task.” Still, Lawrence isn’t unique in this regard and is actually facing less of a shortage than many places across the state and country, particularly those in rural areas. However, the state has already classified Douglas County as having an inadequate number of primary care providers to serve its low-income and Medicaid-eligible populations. Vaughn said the shortage is also a concern because of the importance
of primary care doctors to providing “downstream revenue.” If, for instance, a Lawrence resident has to go out of town to see a primary care physician, that doctor will likely refer to specialists and labs in that community. “It is the feeder to everything else,” she said. She noted that the number of hospitalists, who are primary care doctors who only see patients in the hospital, went from seven in 2008 to 10 now, which she called adequate. One of the hospital’s most recent Please see DOCTORS, page 2A
KU law school receives censure from ABA approval, the ABA said in a news release. The committee imposed a public censure on the law Kansas University’s law school that must be posted on school has been sanctioned by the school’s home page for a the American Bar Association year and imposed a $50,000 penfor violating the ABA standards alty “based on the finding that for approval of law schools, the the law school made erroneous ABA announced Thursday. statements and withheld inforThe committee found that the mation during the ABA’s considlaw school violated standards eration of the matter,” the news when it launched an American Lerelease said. gal Studies degree in January 2012 According to a news release and admitted two students before from KU, “the school mistakenly obtaining the committee’s believed that the new program came within the scope of the existing
By Ben Unglesbee
bunglesbee@ljworld.com
master’s program and, therefore, did not seek acquiescence from the ABA.” In an interview, KU law school Dean Stephen Mazza said the school’s understanding was that it had a general master’s program, under which it could add addiKANSAS concentraUNIVERSITY tional tions without ABA approval. “It was really just a misunderstanding about what we were required to submit and when we were required to do it,” he said.
The ABA contends that the KU law school was “grossly negligent” in failing to get approval for the new degree. According to the ABA’s statement of censure, the school learned from the KU registrar that, after the school accepted two international students into the American Legal Studies program, it could not enroll them because the program did not yet exist within the university system. While the school waited for the Kansas Board of Regents to incorporate it, the students were
After the Kansas Board of Regents approved a new policy on Wednesday that allows state university CEOs to fire employees for social media posts that conflict with the interest of their schools, faculty members and university employees around the state have been scrambling to understand what the policy means for them and to respond to it. Many took to social media to express their views. A new Facebook group called “Kansas Universities Faculty & Staff Against Regents’ Speech Policy” had already garnered more than 280 likes by 5:30 p.m. Thursday. On his Facebook page, Burdett Loomis, a Kansas University professor of political science, called the new policy “unbelievably broad and vague” and said he felt a “chill” in response to the “illconsidered and expansive provisions” in the policy. The Loomis post drew more than 30 comments, including some from Kansas Regent Ed McKechnie, who disputed the “broad and vague description.” Many other KU faculty members have already expressed dismay. Ron Barnett-Gonzalez, a KU associate professor of aerospace engineering and the state conference president of the American Association of University Professors, said the new policy was “fraught with potential for abuse.”
Please see LAW, page 2A
Please see POLICY, page 2A
Breaking the barrier: Local home sales, prices surge A very good year for Lawrence real estate has pushed the market past a key milestone: Total sales for the year stood at 1,001 at the end of November. Lawrence has tried to break the 1,000home sales barrier for a few years now. Through November, home sales for the year were up 20 percent over 2012. Compared with the same period in 2011, sales are up a remarkable 53 percent. It’s not only sales that have rebounded, but prices are up, too. The median selling price so far in 2013 is $170,000, up 7.3 percent from the same period a year ago.
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Also of note:
The number of listings on the Lawrence market is down to 380. That’s down nearly 17 percent from the same period a year ago. If that trend holds, home prices are likely to rise.
The median number of days a home stays on the market before selling is now down to 42, compared to 60 days in 2012.
The number of newly constructed homes sold so far in 2013 is 92, up nearly 18 percent from the same period a year ago. — Chad Lawhorn
KU women bring cheer The Kansas women’s basketball team visits Lawrence Memorial Hospital to give gifts, spread cheer and maybe hold a baby or two. Page 3A
Vol.155/No.354 32 pages