There is another side to the news stories and commentaries appearing on the front pages of the Lawrence Journal-World denouncing the proposal by the Kansas University Medical Center to expand its education and research programs into Kansas City, Mo.

As a lifelong Kansan from the western part of the state and a KUMC faculty member in the department of internal medicine for nearly 40 years, I have helped to train many of the fine physicians who practice in Kansas and I have cared for many Kansans with kidney ailments.

I am very proud of our institution and am grateful for the support that KUMC has received from the citizens of Kansas over the years. I was especially pleased in 1998 when the Legislature took the bold step to free our hospital from the constraints inherent in a state institution. The results are positive. The hospital has used the sweat equity of hundreds of my colleagues to move forward and we now have a first-rate facility.

KUMC is certainly the best academic medical center in Kansas City, but we are not in the upper tier of state-supported institutions in the Midwest, let alone the nation. Chancellor Hemenway and Vice Chancellor Barbara Atkinson acknowledged that and several years ago began the process to lift KUMC to a higher level.

The standard for determining the ranking of academic institutions such as ours is found in the evidence of medical research productivity. Research is driven by the thirst for new knowledge that characterizes leaders in medicine – doctors who are not just satisfied to make a diagnosis, but doctors who tackle the most difficult cases, learn from their experiences and publish articles to enlighten others. Education and research are tightly intertwined in academic centers. Our students are drawn to seek excellence by those who teach them.

Unfortunately, according to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), we rank in the bottom one-third of state-supported institutions in research productivity. We must do better.

The “Time to Get It Right” analysis of metropolitan biomedical research assets in greater Kansas City discovered that KUMC is the center of research action with the potential to be a great partner of the evolving Stowers Institute. In response to the report, resources from the Kansas City, Mo., corporate and private philanthropic communities have been pledged to increase translational research in the community, the kind of research that takes the laboratory discoveries to the bedside. To take advantage, KUMC must have significant resources to recruit more research-savvy physicians who can compete for grant dollars from NIH and other sources. This will make our fine patient care programs even stronger and clearly differentiate KU Hospital as a regional destination of excellence.

Those of us on the faculty who aspire to see our institution improve are not trying to make this into an “Eastern” institution, as some have suggested. Midwestern institutions we aspire to emulate include the University of Iowa where in 2005 the department of internal medicine generated 30 percent ($44,306,810) of the National Institutes of Health research done in the School of Medicine, an amount equal to the total awarded to all of KUMC.

Cooperation with institutions in Missouri will increase these opportunities for research, and we should not fear to cross that state line barrier.

In the early 1970s, KUMC joined with St. Luke’s Hospital, Kansas City General Hospital and the KC Veterans Hospital to create the Midwest Transplant Network. We wrestled privately with strong parochial desires within the community of those who wanted to develop individual organ procurement agencies at each hospital and reached agreement in a few weeks for a single entity that was satisfactory to all parties. Within a few years we included Research Hospital in Kansas City, St. Francis Hospital, Wichita and University of Missouri, Columbia Hospital in a program that retrieves kidneys, liver, hearts and pancreas. Hundreds of Kansas lives have been extended because of this interstate program. The MOT Network laboratory, a model for the nation, is administered by a board composed of representatives from each participating hospital and is currently located on the Kansas side of State Line Avenue a few blocks south of KUMC.

In 1982, I worked with a Kansas City, Mo., businessman and a former mayor of Kansas City, Mo., to develop the Polycystic Kidney Foundation, a not-for-profit organization that serves approximately 4,000 persons in Kansas with PKD, and millions more world-wide. The PKD Foundation (international headquarters) is currently located on Ward Parkway in southern Kansas City, Mo. Research on PKD conducted at KUMC and supported by the Foundation has benefited hundreds of patients from across our State.

Throughout my career at KUMC I have enjoyed the freedom to explore creative ideas wherever they took me. I have always believed that one day the biomedical community of metropolitan Kansas City would rise to new heights and that of Kansas with it. We are oh so close to realizing that goal and bringing to Kansas a medical institution that “Eastern” schools will be envious of.