Wednesday, March 28, 2007
After weeks of conflict, the University of Kansas Hospital and the University of Kansas Medical Center have agreed to move forward in affiliation negotiations with St. Luke’s Hospital. On Tuesday the KU Hospital Authority Board voted unanimously to accept an outline that provides the framework for the affiliation.
Initial problems in negotiations stemmed from concerns of those at KU Hospital that the affiliation would give St. Luke’s Hospital an unfair advantage. St. Luke’s declined to comment on the affiliation. KU Hospital was reluctant to agree to any terms that would make it difficult for it to compete with St. Luke’s.
The outline plans for KU Hospital to receive funding for more than 100 residency positions during the next three to five years. The outline also increases hospital funding by $12 million a year and calls for continued talk of a new medical office building on the Med Center campus.
Amy Jordan Wooden, senior director for public affairs at KU Medical Center, said that the affiliation would have three major benefits for the Med Center.
“It will allow us to train more doctors at KU, we can provide better training for our doctors, and we will have more resources to train those doctors,” Wooden said. “Anytime you have greater collaborations between research institutes it can benefit the entire region,” Wooden said.
pullquote
We’ve paid millions of dollars in ads and marketing to establish the KU Hospital brand.
-Dennis McCulloch, government and public relations director at KU Hospital
Dennis McCulloch, government and public relations director at KU Hospital, said that the main concern was St. Luke’s use of the Med Center’s name and branding.
“We’ve paid millions of dollars in ads and marketing to establish the KU Hospital brand,” McCulloch said.
McCulloch said that the only way the KU Hospital would benefit from the affiliation was if the Med Center realized its vision of growth and invested more resources toward research and faculty.
Wooden said that the Med Center’s goal was to move into a top-50 institution in the nation. She said that St. Luke’s use of branding would be limited to research and education and would not affect competition between St. Luke’s and KU Hospital.
“We’ve been engaged in extremely intense negotiations with KU Hospital to get their blessing,” Wooden said.
The conflict was so intense that Irene Cumming, KU Hospital president, announced on Tuesday that she would be resigning at the end of June. McCulloch said that the resignation was partially due to conflicts with the Med Center.
“Irene thought the best thing she could do for the hospital would be to keep fighting for this agreement to be done right and allow fresh leadership to come in and take the hospital the rest of the way under this new environment,” McCulloch said.
Cumming will be succeeded by Bob Page, KU Hospital’s chief operating officer.
St. Luke’s should vote on the proposal by Friday.
Kansan staff writer Joe Hunt can be contacted at jhunt@kansan.com.
— Edited by James Pinick
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