By CRISTINA JANNEY
Hays Post

Patients reap many benefits from staying close to home to receive medical services.

Yet, some Ellis County patients still travel outside of the county to receive medical treatment.

Hospital officials spoke to Hays Post about the factors that might lead to patients leaving home for treatment and what local providers are doing to try to change perceptions that care is better elsewhere.

HaysMed market share in Ellis County is 80 percent to 85 percent, which is good, according to Ed Herrman, HaysMed CEO.

For the hospital’s primary service area, the market share is about 77 percent. This includes Ellis, Russell, Rooks, Rush and Trego counties. The hospital also has a secondary market that extends about 75 miles from Hays and a tertiary market that encompasses most of northwest Kansas and some of southwest Kansas.

Herrman said some patients think they will receive better care in a metro area, but bigger is not always better.

“The care is not better,” he said. “Actually in many cases, from quality outcomes, the care is not as good as we are here. In Leapfrog, we are rated an A. We are rated as high as you can be rated on quality of care in our industry. There are many of those facilities that people are going to in Wichita or another metropolitan area that are not As on Leapfrog’s grading scale.

“That is our focus — quality and the patient.”

Issued twice per year, the Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade empowers regular people to find a safer hospital in their community by using a A, B, C, D, F grading system.

The hospital has some of the best outcomes in the state on hip and knee surgeries, Herrman said. In orthopedics, HaysMed has a Durable Medical Equipment Accreditation and the DNV-GL Healthcare Hip and Knee Replacement Certification for Center of Excellence. It was the first in the state to obtain this certification. HaysMed also is certified in managing infection risk.

Staying at home for medical care can be better for your health, Herrman said.

“You’re close to home. Any time you don’t have to add the stressors of travel. … If you are going to have surgery, we are always going to hope the outcome is textbook and is just as they said it was going to be, but sometimes it is not that way because other things happen. We have patients and families who find themselves thinking they are going for a routine procedure who are now spending the next three or four days in a city they didn’t plan on staying in,” he said.

Staying close to home also means you are closer to care if you have a complication after a procedure.

“They are typically either in an emergency or some type of crisis, and our surgeons are not the ones who have dealt with the procedure to begin with. That always makes it a little more difficult,” Herrman said.

Staying locally also supports the local facility, he said.

“We always want to give people access to as much as possible, so they don’t have to travel, but when they are not utilizing the resources that are right here for them, it makes it much more difficult to provide all those resources in the future,” he said.

HaysMed has an especially strong oncology department, Herrman said. HaysMed follows the same protocols as the University of Kansas Medical Center and, in some instances, the Mayo Clinic.

“That is not a process of healing that you want try to have to do on the road,” he said. “It is very taxing and it is difficult and painful for those patients who are going through cancer treatment and radiation treatment.”

Herrman said the quickest way for local residents to get the care they need is to come to HaysMed.

“Because if our physicians diagnosis you with something that is not in their practice — it is not something that they do — they still already know the guys and the gals who are out there that do that speciality,” he said. “If we can’t take care of it here, we know who can, and we will set it up for you and make it easy and seamless.”

HaysMed has the advantage of being connected to the University of Kansas Medical System, which allows it to bring in more specialists and connect with specialists in the system in other parts of the state. HaysMed has been affiliated with the University of Kansas system for two years. The hospital still has its own board and manages its own strategic plan.

HaysMed is using its affiliation with the health system to increase access to specialists through telemedicine. Some of these specialties will include psychiatric and neurological evaluations, as well as oncology.

“The University of Kansas Health System is known for its oncology program,” Herrman said. “It is state of the art. It competes with the best in the nation. It gives the opportunity to get those super sub-specialists. They do things that no one else in the state or region does. It gives the ability to hopefully have access to those individuals, so people from western Kansas don’t have to drive to Kansas City to necessarily get that care or second opinion. If they don’t want to do that travel, we can set it up to do it here.”

When Colby lost its oncologist, HaysMed took over the program.

Telemedicine provides access to a limited resources. Medical schools can’t graduate doctors fast enough to replace the Baby Boomer physicians who are retiring in some specialties, Herrman said.

HaysMed was without an ENT for two years, but the University of Kansas Health System helped HaysMed secure a ENT who is at the hospital three out of four weeks a month and an advanced practice provider who works in Hays five days a week. Before that clinic was offered in Hays, patients from northwest Kansas would have had to travel to Salina or Hutchinson for treatment.

Telemedicine also helps manage a finite resources. If a specialist doesn’t have to drive or fly to a remote location, they can spend more time seeing patients.

Herrman said he saw telemedicine expanding with advances in technology.

Twelve-lead ECGs to monitor the heart and an otoscope, which is used to look into your ears, can already be hooked up to smart phones. He said he sees a time in the future when families will have some of theses devices at home so they can have telemedicine visits with doctors after hours.

Despite the use of telemedicine, Herrman said the hospital would still like to sign a contract with a neurologist and rheumatologist. There is only one neurologist in all of western Kansas.

Herrman said the hospital is constantly in the recruiting process. Recruiters follow students from pre-med all the way through their residencies.

“We are making sure that we are trying to connect with them early to get them to come back to western Kansas,” he said.

Rural Kansas has assets such as good schools, opportunities to connect in the community and a work/life balance. Yet, Herrman said living and working in western Kansas is not for everyone. The hospital tries to work with physicians and their spouses to make sure Hays is the right fit for their families.

The hospital is also unwilling to compromise on quality candidates, Herrman said.

“That’s why it takes us a little more time for some positions because we are not willing to accept someone that is substandard just to have someone,” he said. “We are selling ourselves short if we do that, and we are selling the community short if we do that. We have a wonderful community, and we have a wonderful facility. We know there is always someone looking for what we have to offer.”

Shae Veach, vice president of regional operations and marketing, said the affiliation with the University of Kansas Medical System is also helping the hospital recruit physicians. He added HaysMed is well below the national turnover rate for physicians.

“I think it is so much more magnified here because of the size of the community and the size of the medical staff,” Veach said. “One physician might leave, and everyone feels it.”