photo by: Peter Hancock

The University of Kansas Hospital is undergoing a major expansion at its main campus in Kansas City, Kan. But it is also growing externally through a new partnership with Hays Medical Center in western Kansas.

Kansas City, Kan. — Officials at the University of Kansas Hospital and Hays Medical Center announced plans Wednesday to form a partnership that will extend KU’s reach into western Kansas and give patients there greater access to advanced health care.

KU Hospital president and CEO Bob Page was careful to point out that the partnership is not a merger or acquisition but a combination of resources through a different kind of business model aimed at improving the quality of health care for western Kansas.

“The beauty of this is, nothing is requiring us to do this. We’re both very strong organizations and we have great track records,” Page said. “I think as you look forward in the health care world and you see what’s coming our way, two strong organizations had the vision to say we have an opportunity to come together.”

“We have an opportunity to see if we can combine the best and the brightest minds, and we can standardize care,” he continued. “We can become more efficient and effective in our care and we’ll provide better care to patients.”

photo by: Peter Hancock

The University of Kansas Hospital is undergoing a major expansion at its main campus in Kansas City, Kan. But it is also growing externally through a new partnership with Hays Medical Center in western Kansas.

The major changes coming in the future, Page said, mainly concern how hospitals get paid. Driven mainly by Medicare, the federal health insurance program for the elderly, the new payment model will be based on outcomes rather than services provided.

“Health care organizations are being asked to do more with less,” he said. “We will be asked to provide even higher quality care, and we get paid less in the future than we get paid today. And so that’s going to require very creative thinking.”

It may also mean that stand-alone nonprofit hospitals like Hays Medical Center will need to link up with larger organizations like KU Hospital so they’ll be able to offer the full range of new procedures and technologies being demanded.

Page said KU’s partnership with Hays Medical Center may become a template for similar arrangements with other smaller hospitals.

“Long term, our hope is you’ll see other organizations want to join in this process,” he said. “And I think tangibly, if we got the right partners around the table, we could absolutely move the dial on clinical outcomes for patients in Kansas.”

KU Hospital is a 756-bed facility, with another 100 beds under construction, located in Wyandotte County, just a few blocks west of the Missouri state line.

It is co-located with KU Medical Center, the university’s school of medicine, and faculty of the medial school are also on staff of the hospital. But the hospital itself is a separate organization that is governed by the quasi-public KU Hospital Authority.

Hays Medical Center is a 207-bed private, nonprofit hospital that serves a community of about 21,000 people in western Kansas. It’s also the supporting hospital for 24 smaller Critical Access Hospitals — hospitals with 25 or fewer beds — that are part of the Northwest Kansas Health Alliance.

In addition, it operates and partners with Pawnee Valley Community Hospital in Larned and co-owns St. Rose Health Center with Centura Health in Great Bend.

Details of how the new partnership will work are still being ironed out, Page said. The letter of intent signed this week stipulates that both organizations will maintain their own boards and their own management teams, but they will produce a consolidated financial report, and a new operations council, made up of members from both organizations, will direct the partnership.