Bert Nash cancels its contract with insurer Cigna; 121 patients could be affected

photo by: Josie Heimsoth/Journal-World

Interim CEO of Bert Nash Kirsten Watkins is pictured at the Douglas County budget hearings on Monday, July 7, 2025.

As it faces a projected multimillion-dollar deficit for 2025, Bert Nash Community Mental Health Center has canceled its contract with one insurance company, which could impact more than 100 of the center’s patients.

That’s according to information the nonprofit shared with the Journal-World in a statement on Tuesday. Interim CEO Kirsten Watkins said that the nonprofit had canceled its contract with insurance company Cigna Healthcare. Watkins said this could affect 121 patients, and that staff was working with those people to help them figure out their next steps, including connecting them to other local health care providers.

When asked by the Journal-World why Bert Nash canceled the contract with Cigna, Watkins said in an email that it was “due to their reimbursement rates being significantly below the actual cost of providing care.”

“We strongly advocated to adjust those rates but were unsuccessful,” she wrote.

The Journal-World asked about the financial effects that ending the contract would have for Bert Nash. Watkins said, “While it’s difficult to assign a precise dollar amount, continuing with Cigna would have meant absorbing significant financial losses that put strain on our ability to serve the entire community.”

The Journal-World also requested a copy of Bert Nash’s final 2025 budget, which was approved last week. On Tuesday, Bert Nash shared a one-page overview of the budget, which reiterated what Bert Nash has said before: that Bert Nash is expecting a $2.669 million loss for 2025 if the county does not answer its requests for additional funding.

Bert Nash’s financial difficulties have been apparent for much of 2025. As early as February, the nonprofit was telling county leaders that it was expecting to see a deficit this year.

At that time, Bert Nash had said that it wasn’t planning to lay any employees off, and was instead planning to reduce its staff by attrition. But in late May, Bert Nash said it had reached a “point of financial exigency,” and did in fact lay off employees. About 30 employees were cut, and other select employees had their salaries reduced.

Then, at the end of June, Bert Nash’s then-CEO, Patrick Schmitz, resigned — but the nonprofit was continuing to pay him what Matthew Herbert, the chair of its governing board, called a “significant severance chunk.”

Herbert said in late July that the nonprofit was paying 90 days of severance to Schmitz, whom he described as the organization’s highest-paid employee. He also said that, although Schmitz had taken a voluntary 15% pay cut earlier in the year, it “apparently ceased to exist at his point of resignation. So we’re actually paying his severance at his full salary for 90 days.”

In July, Bert Nash asked the Douglas County Commission for about $1.7 million in new funding to help cover its 2025 losses. At around the same time, Watkins, the new interim CEO, had told Bert Nash’s financial committee that the budget crunch was “an opportunity for us to really be open and honest with ourselves about every one of these line items” in the center’s budget.

“I was even looking at the postage line and having conversations with people about that,” she told the committee.

Watkins in her statement did include a few steps that the organization has taken to reassess its finances, as she sought to reassure the community that Bert Nash could still provide care for its clients.

She said that Bert Nash was working with a couple of outside organizations. One of them is SSC Advisors, an accounting firm that it contracted with in June to help with budgeting, audit preparation and financial statement reporting. Another is Lawrence-based debt collection agency Silo Recovery, which will attempt to recover unpaid balances from clients.

Bert Nash has previously said that part of its difficulties comes from clients who aren’t able to pay. In an email in May, Bert Nash Chief Advancement Officer Emily Farley said that 28% of Bert Nash’s clients, or around 700 people per month, don’t have insurance, and caring for the uninsured cost Bert Nash about $8.85 million in 2024.

Watkins on Tuesday said she wanted to make it clear that Bert Nash — and the Treatment and Recovery Center of Douglas County, which it operates — were continuing to respond to hundreds of mental health emergencies a month.

In May through July, she said, the TRC has responded to 1,011 crisis episodes and provided direct care to over 552 individuals. She said that’s up more than 5% from what it saw in those months in 2024.

“While our team is stretched thin – the result of positions that were eliminated earlier this year and the high number of unfilled positions we have – they are also going above and beyond to ensure essential services continue every day,” Watkins said in the statement.

Watkins, who is also a licensed clinical psychologist and has worked with Bert Nash since August 2021, said that she was “still committed” to providing “the highest quality services.”

“… There is much work ahead, but I believe in the future we are building,” she said in the statement. “I believe in this team. And I believe in this community.”