Health Care for Students

While your educational journey can be an exciting time, burnout, depression, and anxiety appear at high levels within medical students and physician populations. Therefore, it is incredibly important to take proactive steps to ward off those troubling realities. That’s why we’ve made a commitment to supporting your health and wellness an integral part of the KansasCOM experience.

At KansasCOM, our faculty and staff speak frequently to students about personal wellness and a commitment to staying healthy. You’ll engage in regular conversations about general wellness, how to assess your own personal wellness, and what concrete steps you can take to maintain personal and professional wellness to perform your best and stay healthy in a high-stress field.

Students of osteopathic medicine consciously choose a career field that is highly stressful—physician practices and decisions can mean life or death for patients. If you are struggling with your own personal and professional wellness, you may not meet your full potential and may only be able to provide suboptimal care. This could put your medical license and the lives of future patients at risk.

Wellness is a multidimensional state of being focused on an awareness of one’s personal health in a variety of elements:

• Environmental
• Occupational
• Physical
• Psychological
• Social
• Spiritual

The concept of “wellness” is very osteopathic in nature in that it focuses on the total person and explores the relationships among the various dimensions of wellness. Understanding the interrelatedness and interconnectivity of the various dimensions is important to achieving comprehensive wellness.

To ensure optimal support for the wellness of our students, we have established a number of resources unique to KansasCOM:

Mayo Clinic Partnership

KansasCOM is working to secure a partnership with the Mayo Clinic to provide a state-of-the-art, innovative wellness curriculum to our students as well as regular wellness assessments that provide students with consistent feedback on their own perceptions of their personal wellness.

Regular Wellness Assessment

Students will take and receive feedback from the Mayo Clinic’s Well-Being Index, a tool designed to compare individual wellness levels to the overall population. Students who discover concerning results can then utilize a variety of resources created by the Mayo Clinic to reduce the potential impact of negative results.

Wellness Council

At KansasCOM, we believe that student wellness initiatives should come from students themselves. Therefore, the Office of Student Affairs and Services will host monthly wellness meetings with student leaders to talk about issues around student wellness and create wellness programming to enhance students’ overall experience.

Wellness Calendar

KansasCOM, working with the student-run Wellness Council, will produce a yearlong calendar of wellness-related initiatives. Some fun, some informative, some inspiring—all related to increasing student wellness.

Health Care Resources

KansasCOM also provides a wide variety of health care resources for students. From off-campus physician resources (see below for details), to free 24/7 access to mental health services, students will find a variety of on- and off-campus options available to them.

KansasCOM does not provide on-site student health services. However, students may seek health care through a group of off-campus clinical providers endorsed by KansasCOM. Students may seek medical services for acute care or short-term treatment at any of the endorsed providers.

Students are encouraged to establish a health care home with a primary care provider from within this endorsed network. If a student requires chronic care or needs to be seen during off hours, this provider should be contacted first. Clinic information is available to students from the Office of Student Affairs and Services. Students need to present their insurance card when seeing any health care provider. All expenses for health services are the responsibility of the student.

Local Wichita services

KansasCOM endorses the following practices for student health care needs:

OMSIII students seeking health care services while on clinical rotations can reference the resources link below.

Local Medical Care Resources

KansasCOM requires all students carry health insurance. To meet this requirement, each year all registered students are automatically enrolled in KansasCOM’s Student Health Insurance Plan (SHIP). Students who have comparable health insurance coverage, meeting all KansasCOM requirements, may waive out of automatic enrollment in SHIP coverage during the open waiver period at the beginning of each academic year.

Detailed information about the SHIP plan, including information regarding enrollment and waiver will be provided to you via a link to your institutional email. Once you receive the email notification, you will activate your account. Once the account is active, you will be able to log in and access the waiver and enrollment options. Please check with the Office of the Registrar at [email protected] if you did not receive a link via your KansasCOM email.

Open Enrollment and Waiver for the KHSU-KansasCOM sponsored SHIP policy is from approximately July 14, 2023, through July 24, 2023. The coverage period of the SHIP plan is July 25, 2023, through July 24, 2024.

Students who do not waive out of the KHSU-KansasCOM SHIP by the deadline will by default be enrolled in SHIP and remain enrolled through the end of the plan year, and thus will be responsible for the associated premiums.

The following are the minimum requirements for students’ personal health insurance coverage:

• Coverage must be active and continuous (no break or termination) for the entire academic year
• Coverage must be ACA (Affordable Care Act) compliant
• Maximum benefit must be unlimited
• Deductible must be $1,000 Single/ $3,000 Family or less per person, per policy year
• Claims must be paid by a U.S.-based company, and underwriting company must be owned, operated, and headquartered in the U.S. and must be in full compliance with all applicable federal laws
• A provider network within 25 miles of the KansasCOM area for primary routine care, specialty, hospital, and diagnostic care
• Plan must provide coverage in all 50 states

Policies which only cover catastrophic events are not acceptable. Policies which are provided through health care co-ops are not allowed.

Prior to beginning clinical experiences, KHSU-KansasCOM students in their third and fourth year must submit additional proof of personal health insurance to Clinical Education. All students must report any break in coverage or change in health insurance while attending classes through the site mentioned above. KHSU-KansasCOM students must report any break in coverage or change in health insurance to Clinical Education during the third and fourth years.

To review the full benefits information, please go to: https://kansascom.mycare26.com/. The Student Health Insurance Plan does NOT cover vision and dental; however, there are options to purchase vision and/or dental coverage separately. That information is also available at https://kansascom.mycare26.com/. If you are a participant in the Student Health Insurance Plan, please use the link to create your Aetna account.

To help our students manage the intense environment and extra stress that they may experience during their academic journey, we have also established numerous mental health resources on and off campus.

On-Campus Services

The Office of Counseling Services is available to students from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Students may be seen free of charge by a licensed professional during those hours.

National Network of Services

Students can call ComPsych 24 hours a day, seven days a week to access mental health services in all 50 states. ComPsych refers students to local, licensed providers. ComPsych has a licensed professional on-call 24/7 and is available to students if they have a mental health emergency.

Local Wichita Services

Additional mental health care services are available in the Wichita metropolitan area including, but not limited to, the following: