To the editor:

The mission of the Kansas University Medical Center is to train health care professionals for Kansas and support research that can improve the health of our citizens. Recently, a controversy has arisen regarding whether KUMC can better accomplish this mission on its own or with collaborative research and education partnerships with Missouri institutions.

The students and faculty are voting on this issue with their feet. Promising trainees and faculty are frustrated by the bickering and are now moving outside of our region, while research opportunities are bypassing Kansas City and going to St. Louis, Iowa City and Denver. Having backgrounds in public health, we are especially pained when we miss out on research opportunities that have direct, local applications for our citizens.

We strongly believe that the future is in collaboration. Over the past three years, faculty at St. Luke’s Hospital and KUMC have been working together to write collaborative grants and to train junior faculty by leveraging the strengths of both institutions. We don’t know which of us has gotten the most out of this relationship; we don’t keep score. But clearly our combined results are better than either of us could have accomplished alone. This is how academic medicine works.

Now is the time for a formal collaboration that fosters the synergy of both institutions’ research and education strengths. Without this collaboration, the real loser will not be St. Luke’s or KUMC, but the entire community that would benefit from improved health care and economic development.

Dr. Edward F. Ellerbeck, chair of preventive medicine & public health, KUMC

Dr. John Spertus, director of cardiovascular education and outcomes research, Mid America Heart Institute, St. Luke’s Hospital