A Topeka-based hospital has decided to stop trying to lure patients away from Lawrence Memorial Hospital through a medical clinic in western Lawrence.

But in the coming months, LMH will close its Lawrence Family Care clinic and lose its five doctors, who will go into business on their own.

Officials with the Cotton-O’Neil Clinic, which is a division of Topeka-based Stormont-Vail HealthCare, announced they were closing their medical office at 1220 Biltmore Drive. The office, which employs four doctors, is scheduled to close Friday.

Meanwhile, Dr. Steven Bruner said his partners at Lawrence Family Care, 1311 Wakarusa Drive, would leave the employment of LMH and open their own practice in the Cotton-O’Neil building on Jan. 1. The practice will be named Lawrence Family Medicine & Obstetrics.

Bruner said he and Drs. Maggie Carpenter, Sherri Vaughn, Rod Barnes and Pamela Huerter decided to leave LMH because they thought they could more efficiently manage the business.

“Managing a hospital and managing a medical practice really requires two different types of management,” Bruner said. “I think the hospital would agree that this hasn’t been an optimum management situation.”

Mutual decision

LMH President and CEO Gene Meyer said the decision to close the practice was mutual. The practice was formed in 1997 when Columbia/HCA was pursuing plans to build a second hospital in Lawrence.

LMH officials made a strategic decision to own a medical practice in the city to help ensure that a large number of patients would continue to use the hospital. Since there no longer is an immediate threat of a second hospital being built in the city, some of the reasons for owning the practice have disappeared, Meyer said.

Lawrence Memorial Hospital nurse Sheri Rosenstengle, Lawrence, tucks in Harold Brune before dinner. LMH received the 2003 Kansas Excellence Award by the Kansas Award for Excellence Foundation for its management practices. Rosenstengle tended to Brune on Tuesday at the hospital.

“There is certainly a calmer environment in terms of hospital competition than when this partnership was created,” Meyer said.

Meyer said the loss of the medical practice wasn’t expected to hurt LMH. Since its opening, the practice had never turned a profit for the hospital, Meyer said, noting that in 2002 it lost $332,000 and it had lost $72,000 so far this year.

Since the new practice will continue to use LMH for its hospital needs, the loss of the practice isn’t expected to result in fewer admissions at LMH either.

Cotton-O’Neil closure

Dr. Charles Yockey, of the Cotton-O’Neil Clinic, said Stormont-Vail closed the Lawrence medical office because of financial reasons. He said Stormont-Vail officials were unhappy with the number of new patients the clinic was producing for the Topeka hospital. Yockey said most of the patients at Cotton-O’Neil Clinic used LMH.

“The only reason for a hospital to have a satellite is to funnel patients to the mother ship,” Yockey said. “I think five years ago when they started this, they thought more patients would leave Lawrence to go to Topeka, and it just didn’t work out that way.”

The four doctors at the clinic have found employment elsewhere.

Yockey said he was opening his own practice based at Lawrence Health Plaza, 330 Ark. Dr. Nancy Nowlin is joining Cotton-O’Neil’s clinic at 330 Ark., which was not affected by the closure of the west Lawrence office. Drs. Jean Schrader and Loree Cordova are joining the practice of Family Medicine Associates, 3511 Clinton Place.

Family Medicine Associates may be the next practice to move. Meyer confirmed that the hospital was in negotiations with the practice to lease the offices at 1311 Wakarusa Drive.

In addition to closing the Lawrence facility, Cotton-O’Neil also sold its Baldwin medical office to LMH. The office, which has one doctor, became part of LMH on Oct. 1.