The Kansas Medical Center isn’t like other hospitals.
There are doctors, nurses, beds and equipment to be sure. However, from the very inception of the facility three years ago, there was a difference.
The hospital is unique in many ways. Most hospitals are designed to maximize the number of patients who can be treated in the facility at one time. Even if they house state-of-the-art units and equipment, little attention is paid to design.
From the ground-up, KMC is designed with physician practice patterns and patient care in mind.
As managed care began to change the way hospitals were paid for services, Dr. Badr Idbeis began to pursue a better way.
Dr. Idbeis was not satisfied with someone other than a doctor determining how a patient would be treated.
That’s why KMC was designed as a physician owned hospital. The very people who provide the care to the patients also control how the facility where they practice is operated.
“We had to find a way to get doctors closer to their patients,” Idbeis said. “We couldn’t let someone using algorithms tell doctors what they had to do with their patients.”
He chose the burgeoning city of Andover to locate his newest venture because Wichita was well served by the system of hospitals in the city. Andover was growing rapidly and Butler County had only one general hospital, so the location was ideal for development.
Once a location was found, plans for the new hospital were drawn.
Dr. Idbeis developed a new idea to improve access to care for people admitted to the hospital. The innovative “Y-Pod” design did away with nurses’ stations where several nurses gathered in between procedures.
The Y-Pod creates three, four-patient sections in each wing of the hospital. Each pod has a nurse assigned to it. This way, one nurse only has four patients under her care at a given time.
“We designed this hospital for superior medical care,” Idbeis said. “It’s not intended to be a place where you run the largest number of patients at the expense of personalized care”
Other features were to locate the operating room adjacent to the intensive care unit and recovery. The emergency room is also adjacent to the operating room because people who come to the emergency room often need surgery and this makes the trip between the two units faster and more efficient where time makes all the difference in outcomes.
But even beyond the unique design of the hospital, Idbeis credits his partners in the venture as the main reason for a successful first three years.
“The physicians are the key to our success,” Idbeis said. “These first class professionals believed they could care for their patients better in this type of hospital. They put it all on the line to come here. But they also get to participate and develop practices as a team. While quality monitoring tools are in place, where we participate in the largest databases; no one dictates to them how to practice medicine.”
Another interesting element in the structure of Kansas Medical Center is that the CEO must be actively practicing physician, like Dr. Idbeis.
“We believe that the system works better like that,” Idbeis said. “a practicing CEO will find out the issues first hand, and be readily accessible to all working at hospital.”
Three years after the hospital opened Idbeis couldn’t think of anything major that he would have changed.
“I wouldn’t really change anything,” Idbeis said. “We did it all as well as we could. The timing, location and quality of the physicians involved were all goals that we reached.”
The future of KMC is bright. Idbeis expects the emergency room to become far busier than it is now. Because of that, they have already begun making provisions to expand that area and could even develop physicians’ offices around the new area.
Other expansion plans might include new service lines like obstetrics.
“There is a young population in the area around Andover and many people are needing these services,” Idbeis said. “It would be great to add a high quality OB service to serve those needs.”
The financial structure is also an advantage for Kansas Medical Center.
“We are better able to succeed in these times than other hospitals,” Idbeis said. “We’ll be here for Andover and Butler County for a very long time. No doubt about it.”
Augusta, Kan. —
