Health Care Foundation of Greater Kansas City’s Grant Shows Results at Truman Medical Centers

Aug. 10, 2011 - PRLog -- Health Care Foundation of Greater Kansas City’s Largest Grant  Results in Better Care, Increased Capacity and Higher Quality  at Truman Medical Centers

Kansas City, Mo — Three years ago, Truman Medical Centers (TMC) saw an opportunity to improve the quality of care it provides. TMC needed additional inpatient capacity to serve patients as quickly as they needed. In addition, overcrowding at the former Western Missouri Mental Health Center (WMMHC), where the psychiatric emergency department was on ambulance diversion 98 percent of the time, created an even greater backlog for the TMC Emergency Department, the entry point for more than 80 percent of inpatients.

"Truman Medical Center is a core component of Kansas City’s health care safety net and regional health care system.  The Health Care Foundation was happy to award TMC with a $7.5 million grant to help the Center reduce congestion in its emergency department and move patients faster to the right levels of care,” Rhonda Holman, Vice-President, Health Care Foundation of Greater Kansas City. “With this money, TMC has improved patient care to seriously ill patients and boosted its ability to keep top tier emergency care available to all of us when time to care matters most. We are proud to be able to support their mission of providing accessible, state-of-the-art quality health care to everyone in need."

In 2008, the Health Care Foundation of Greater Kansas City (HCF) awarded TMC a $7.5 million grant to improve inpatient acute and mental health bed capacity. The grant, the largest that the HCF has ever awarded, helped TMC Hospital Hill to:
•   Add 10 single occupancy in-patient care rooms
•   Convert 10 intermediate care telemetry beds to full ICU beds
•   Allow for more than 30 regular beds to be converted to monitored beds
•   Expand inpatient psychiatric services
•   Replace 104 medical/surgical beds to improve patient care and patient satisfaction

“TMC and the HCF partnership has proven successful in expanding the quality of healthcare in our community,” said TMC President/CEO John W. Bluford.  “This grant has enabled TMC to do more in quality and appropriate, efficient care for all of its patents.”

Through this grant, TMC has been able to create a new medical intensive care unit that has dramatically decreased the time to transfer patients from the emergency department and doubled the capacity for specialized monitored patient care. Purchase of 175 (104 grant funded) new, state-of-the-art patient beds has resulted in nearly $4 million in savings from reductions in patient and caregiver injuries.
The grant also enabled TMC to expand its capacity for treating acute mental illness. As part of a partnership with the Missouri Department of Mental Health, TMC leased 25 additional inpatient mental health beds, doubling its ability to accommodate mental health inpatients. TMC also assumed management of a separate 12-bed psychiatric emergency department, at the former Western Missouri Mental Health Center. These two initiatives have resulted in a nearly 100 percent decrease in ambulance diversion rates for psychiatric emergency patients.

“What has happened in the past, when there wasn’t adequate mental health access, is that people end up in less than optimal situations and they don’t get the care and treatment that they need,” said TMC Behavioral Health Chief Operating Officer Marsha Morgan. “What these changes mean is that psychiatric patients who used to stay in medical beds now are receiving services in a psychiatric emergency department where they rapidly get the kind of care and treatment that they need.”

For more information about the grant and results please view http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gXjfUA7gDA.



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TMC is a not-for profit health system in Kansas City. TMC includes TMC Hospital Hill, TMC Lakewood, TMC Behavioral Health, the Jackson Co. Health Department. TMC is the primary teaching hospital for the UMKC School of Medicine.