KU Hospital seeing record number of patients; actress Joan Allen replacing Tom Skerritt in TV ads

Kansas University Hospital announced on Tuesday that it had again set a record for inpatient volume, with 26,998 patients discharged from the hospital in the fiscal year ending June 30.

That figure was up 3 percent from the previous year’s totals and was up 106 percent since the hospital became an independent authority in 1998.

Also, the hospital’s risk-adjusted mortality rate was the lowest in its recorded history. That measure seeks to provide a rate that takes into account the likelihood that a patient will survive when determining the overall rate.

The hospital’s rate indicated that 407 people whose diagnoses and other risk factors indicated a low likelihood of survival left the hospital alive.

“We’re taking care of sicker patients, we’re taking care of more patients and we’re providing great care to them,” said Tammy Peterman, the hospital’s chief operating officer and its chief nursing officer.

The hospital also released other figures on Tuesday, as its Authority Board received the report:

• Patient satisfaction for the hospital for the fiscal year was in the 89th percentile, compared with hospitals in the country that use the Press-Ganey survey.

• Outpatient visits rose in the same period by 1 percent to 365,223.

• Total surgeries rose 11 percent to 17,732.

• The hospital served patients from every county in Kansas in the last fiscal year, as well as patients from every state and the District of Columbia.

Hospital officials said that the hospital’s growth was limited only by its capacity, and new space would be in use soon.

New inpatient rooms would be opening at the end of summer 2012 in a three-floor expansion of the hospital’s Center for Advanced Heart Care.

Authority board members were also told that the hospital would soon be unveiling a new advertising campaign featuring actress Joan Allen, who has appeared in “The Bourne Supremacy,” “Face/Off” and “The Contender,” for which she received an Academy Award nomination. She will replace actor Tom Skerritt in a series of hospital advertisements to be unveiled starting Wednesday.