Stormont Vail Health has issued a statement on the contract agreement between that organization and Geary County on the operation
Geary County Commissioners Friday approved a contract with Stormont Vail Health that will pave the way to stabilize the provision of health services in Geary County. The Geary Community Hospital Board of Trustees also approved the agreement.
“Providing health care services close to home is important to the health and wellbeing of Kansans,” said Rob Kenagy, M.D., President and Chief Executive Officer of Stormont Vail Health. “We are committed to stabilizing and then improving access to timely, high quality care in the region.
“Stormont Vail already has a growing presence in Manhattan with the development of our new facility near the K-State campus. With this opportunity in Junction City, our goal is to further extend the excellent care of Stormont Vail providers and our team to the residents of Geary, Riley and surrounding counties.”
Margaret Grismer, Interim CEO at Geary Community Hospital, said “This is a positive step for our team at Geary Community Hospital and the area we serve. We look forward to working closely with Stormont Vail as we begin transitioning and integrating with their healthcare system to provide the very best of care to our patients.
Stormont Vail Health leaders began discussions with the Geary Community Hospital and Geary County earlier this year when a community transition task force sought a way forward for the financially struggling healthcare organization. Without securing a different way forward, the Geary Community Hospital and related rural health clinic were faced certain closure.
Under the contract, Stormont Vail Health will manage Geary Community Hospital and rural health clinic from July 1 until the end of the year. During that time, with the combined efforts of teams at Geary Community Hospital and Stormont Vail Health will stabilize hospital and clinic operations, install an electronic medical record system, and introduce and integrate Stormont Vail culture and processes.
The contract is anticipated to be closed at the end of the year if a number of conditions are met. Geary Community Hospital operations would then close and the Stormont Vail Health system will begin its operations. Stormont Vail currently operates a regional 586-licensed bed acute care hospital in Topeka, two ambulatory surgical centers, a behavioral health hospital, specialty medicine clinics and primary care clinics in communities throughout northeast Kansas, including Manhattan and Emporia.
A condition for closing the contract is that Geary County will fund $20 million in deferred maintenance and repair costs at the facility that were identified in 2021 by a third party assessment.
Stormont Vail leaders also shared significant investments they plan to make in the Junction City healthcare operation to develop a viable healthcare facility with a stable workforce. These initiatives represent an investment of nearly $7.5 million by Stormont Vail during the management period from July 2022 through December 31, 2022, and nearly $20 million over the following 5-year period.
These include:
System Service Support
Retaining and supporting the workforce at Geary Community Hospital is extremely important during the management period. There has already been work in this regard, including:
- Stormont Vail working with Medical Staff leaders of GCH to provide the foundation for next steps;
- Creation of plans to provide interim leadership to the nursing administration, surgical services and ambulatory clinic teams. This will ensure a smooth contract period and transition to new operations;
- Extending operational support from Stormont Vail system services in finance, revenue cycle, human resources, clinical quality and facility management.
Information Technology Infrastructure
- Stormont Vail will bring the Epic medical record solution to the new Stormont operations.
- This installation will improve documentation, streamline billing and coding processes and improve the workflows required to deliver health care services in Geary County.
- Epic will be installed as the single medical record system across all health care operations, facilitating the coordination of patient care between Stormont Vail providers in Junction City, Topeka and across the system. Installation of Epic requires updates to critical technology infrastructure.
- This upgrade will connect Stormont’s Geary County operations into the Stormont Vail system with cybersecurity, maintenance and management infrastructure already successfully implemented at Stormont’s main campus.
This IT work will be completed during the management period with anticipated go-live when Stormont Vail begins its independent operations in Geary County. The investment in this period is anticipated to be approximately $3 million in equipment and licenses for the electronic health record system.
Acute Care Operations
Stabilizing the acute care operations at GCH during the management phase is part of Stormont Vail’s plan. This will be accomplished by:
- Extending the Stormont Vail Hospitalists and Emergency Department physicians to GCH to begin the process of standardizing and stabilizing the Emergency Department to Inpatient Admission workflows. These highly-trained physicians understand the requirements to operate a highly reliable acute care operation. This should enable more patients to remain in Junction City when hospital admission is required.
- Access by acutely ill patients for timely consults from medical specialists will be facilitated by the telemedicine infrastructure at Stormont Vail. This allows for specialists to consult with hospitalists, as needed. Initially, Stormont Vail Cardiology and Neurology specialists will provide consults, expanding later to additional specialties.
Procedural Services
Stormont Vail’s surgical teams are prepared to close the gap in care after the departure of a GCH surgeon. This will include:
- The Stormont Vail General Surgery service line has started transitioning the bariatric surgery patients that required immediate care.
- Stormont Vail teams have a clinical practice schedule planned and are readying to operate on patients in the Geary County facility.
- The investment in surgical services will be significant, with nearly $1 million of equipment needed in the first year.
- Stormont Vail’s Manhattan gastroenterology providers have applied for privileges to perform the procedural services at GCH. Stabilizing and growing procedural volumes at GCH is extremely important to the viability and future success of operations in Geary County.
- Stormont Vail anticipates working closely with physicians in the region to assist with acute surgical and procedural services at GCH. Rural Health Clinic
Rural Health Clinic
Stormont Vail operates a robust and expansive primary care network in eastern Kansas. Stormont Vail will bring the GCH primary care practices into the management structure of Stormont Vail’s current primary care footprint. This will provide significant support, including:
- Remote Nurse Triage call center, medication refill call center, centralized scheduling and medical leadership support services. Support allows practices to provide high value care for patients.
- This primary care network has access to specialists within the Stormont Vail system through Epic referrals.