Saint Luke’s helps Garnett hospital

Editor’s note: With Allen County studying the future of its hospital, including possible construction of a new Allen County Hospital, the Register is surveying health care facilities in the region to learn of their structures, operations, challenges and success stories. This article about Anderson County Hospital in Garnett is another in an occasional series.

By BRUCE SYMES
Register Reporter

GARNETT — Denny Hachenberg, chief executive officer, and the nearly 200 employees of Anderson County Hospital played host recently to a special visitor.
The 25-bed critical access hospital and 32-resident long-term care facility is part of the Saint Luke’s Health System of Kansas City. As one of 11 entities in the sole remaining locally owned health care conglomerate in the metropolitan area, ACH was among hospitals judged by the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology for the Malcolm Baldridge National Quality Award.
Saint Luke’s Hospital of Kansas City, Mo., won the award in 2003, and this year Saint Luke’s Health System is one of seven health care applicants, from among 42 nationwide that submitted entries, to receive site visits.
As he rolled out the red carpet earlier this month for the Baldridge Award evaluator, Hachenberg was reminded the value of being part of such a strong, prestigious family of hospitals as Saint Luke’s.
“The idea is that you should be able to go into any Saint Luke’s hospital — systemwide — and receive the highest level of care,” Hachenberg, who has been at ACH’s helm seven years, said. “That’s our goal: to have the best medical practices throughout the system. There is a lot of talent in the system that is shared with our physicians and staff, and the learning capabilities are great, also.
“Then, if more specialty care is needed, we have clinics at our hospital or patients can receive help within the system, as well.”

Denny Hachenberg, chief executive officer of Anderson County Hospital in Garnett, stops at the nurse’s station to visit with, from left, Teal Workinger, Sutthinant Daniel, Julie Evans and Amy Winn.

That serves Garnett and its 3,300 citizens and Anderson County’s 8,100 residents well, as it has since ACH became part of the Saint Luke’s family in 1995. The Garnett hospital also considers as part of its service area southern Franklin County and western Linn County, “but we lose some in the western part of (Anderson) county to Burlington and from the southern part to Iola,” Hachenberg said.
In place along U.S. 59 Highway since it opened as a full-service, acute care hospital in 1951, ACH has changed much in form and function through the years. In 1967, the long-term care unit was added and a $3.8 million renovation and modernization project was completed in 1999, the same year critical access designation was granted by the federal government to receive cost-based reimbursement from Medicare and ensure the long-term health of the rural hospital.
In 1995, the Anderson County Commission hired Saint Luke’s to manage ACH, then two years later the county and health system signed a lease agreement that Hachenberg noted is a model used by many small hospital across Kansas. It calls for Anderson County to be responsible for the maintenance of facilities and for acquisitions of health care technology and equipment. Saint Luke’s pays a fee based on percentage of net revenue and provides access to its resources and expertise from all parts of its 11-member system.
In addition to the Garnett and Kansas City hospitals, other Saint Luke’s entities include Saint Luke’s South in Overland Park; Saint Luke’s Brain and Stroke Institute, Saint Luke’s Cancer Institute, Saint Luke’s Mid America Heart Institute and Saint Luke’s Midwest Ear Institute, all in Kansas City; Kansas City Orthopedic Institute in Leawood; and hospitals in Lee’s Summit, Trenton and Smithville, Mo.

RECOGNIZING THE need for community involvement in operation of and support for ACH, Hachenberg, the county and Saint Luke’s have three boards contributing to both. A seven-member operating board is seated by Anderson County and Saint Luke’s to carry on the day-to-day business of provisions for care, assessing and meeting needs among the hospital’s demographics, finances and the like.
The thrust of ACH today reflects, Hachenberg noted, the operating board’s recognition of the changing needs for rural health care. “You have to do what the community needs,” he said. “We operate first and foremost an emergency; secondly primary care; thirdly we offer clinics for specialty care (neurology, orthopedic, podiatry, cardiology, veterans care, gynecology, gastroenterology, cataracts, general surgery and urology); and fourthly we offer acute care, or admissions to the hospital. So basically we do outpatient care first, and then acute care and skilled care.”
A board of trustees is charged with maintaining and upgrading the hospital as needed. It contains five members appointed by the county commission and includes three people who also serve on the operating board.
The 1999 remodeling, and the information campaign that preceded the 2.5-to-1 voter margin of victory of the bond election that funded it, was the trustees’ responsibility, the administrator noted. “Our board of trustees and hospital board recognized the need to look to the future and what our residents needed,” Hachenberg said. “The community recognizes the importance of having a local hospital and shows it in contributing financially.”
County taxes, he said, equal the annual payment of debt service on the bonds, or about $200,000.
Finally, a foundation board made up of 16 members of the community arranges for endowments and estate gifts, seeks grants and plans fund-raising projects such as an annual golf tournament to ensure the continued financial health of ACH.
“We’re very heavy on the community representation,” Hachenberg said. “We kind of devised the model that is used in different cities around the state, as far as the lease agreement and board makeup is concerned.”

A FAMILY CARE Center, built as part of the 1999 modernization project, employs three family practice physicians and a nurse practitioner and is kept busy by a steady flow of patients from throughout the county.
The hospital, in addition to its acute care beds, offers the emergency room, home health care, comprehensive therapy services, nuclear cardiology studies, a CT scanner in its radiology department, a state-of-the-art laboratory that includes a blood chemistry analyzer, twice-a-week magnetic resonance imaging services and space for the various specialty clinics that visit ACH.
No intensive care or obstetrics services are offered, although pre- and post-natal care is offered through the Saint Luke’s Health System specialists.
“Have we delivered babies in our ER? Of course. Every hospital has,” Hachenberg said. “But we have so few babies born in Anderson County that it makes more sense to deliver the babies elsewhere, and most of our families go to Saint Luke’s South in Overland Park, which is just 70 miles away.”
The long-term care facility provides skilled care for up to 32 residents. It recently received its second consecutive deficiency-free rating from an annual state licensing survey and earned a 98 percent satisfaction score from residents this past year.
“I have no hesitation in recommending our facility to family and friends,” Hachenberg said.
A hospital-based, three- to four-unit ambulance service, operated by the county, is housed in a brand new facility on the ACH campus.
All account for an approximate $13 million organization that in 2005, which is the most recent year figures were available, provided more than $5 million in salaries and benefits to its nearly 200 employees. There were 31,000 outpatient visits to the ER and physicians clinic, 338 hospital admissions and 2,571 visits to patients in their homes.
Hopes are that the shared pride in the local health care facility comes across to the Baldridge Award judges as they consider Saint Luke’s Health System, and Anderson County Hospital, for the national business quality accolade, Hachenberg said.
“Our system’s mission statement is; ‘The Best Place to Get Care and the Best Place to Give Care.’ We’re here to serve the community, and I think that motto speaks to our patients and to our employees,” he said.