Healthcare and Community Services
The infusion of a vibrant life-sciences sector adds a powerful dimension to the vital role of those delivering health care for the region.
Some charitable donations light a philanthropic spark. Jim and Virginia Stowers have poured more than 95 percent of their $2 billion net worth into the Stowers Institute for Medical Research since its creation in 1994, igniting not a spark but a life-sciences prairie fire.
The laboratories in the former Menorah Medical Center building have drawn world-class talent to conduct genetic research into the causes of cancer, diabetes and other illnesses. That demonstration of the power of medical research has helped bring a communitywide focus to elevating Kansas City’s stature in the life sciences.
Since then, increased efforts by the University of Kansas Hospital and KU Medical Center, Saint Luke’s Hospital, Children’s Mercy Hospitals and Clinics, MRIGlobal, UMKC and Kansas City University of Medicine and Biosciences have all stepped up to promote a regional life-sciences economy that now numbers 2,000 scientists working with $550 million in annual research spending.
Those numbers also reflect a vibrant animal-health presence, something that sets this region apart from any other in the country: Companies in the corridor from Kansas State University in Manhattan to the University of Missouri in Columbia, two other members of the regional life-sciences consortium, account for nearly one-third of a $19 billion global market in the animal-health sector.
And in the middle of all that is Kansas City. Opportunities in both human and animal health have positioned the region for long-term growth in those emerging fields, and many of those varied research efforts will dovetail with the broader mission of improved health-care delivery across a region with 2.3 million residents.
A key driver of the growing life-sciences presence took place on the Kansas side in 2008, when voters ignored a faltering economy to pass a sales tax that would fund the Johnson County Educational Research Triangle. Since then, more than $51 million has been raised on behalf of the KU Cancer Center in Fairway, the KU-Edwards campus in Overland Park, and in bringing Kansas State University to the metro area with its new Olathe Innovation Campus.
All incorporate some form of programming to foster business spinoffs from research efforts or offer instruction in science, math engineering and technology.
A Center of Health Care
The closest major metropolitan area to Kansas City—St. Louis—is roughly 250 miles away. Secondary markets like Wichita or Des Moines are at least 200 miles distant; Omaha is nearly the same. As a region, Kansas City draws patients from across a four-state area. This market position contributes to the sizable number of large hospitals and medical institutions here.
Everything from organ transplantation to cancer care is immediately available here, and the latter could be another growth area for the region: In 2012, the University of Kansas Cancer Center achieved its long-sought designation as a National Cancer Institute research center, a move that KU officials say could dramatically raise the region’s profile in cancer treatment. The cancer center is just one piece of an impressive campus that includes the hospital, which operates independent from KU as a public health authority, and School of Medicine, home to the allied-health functions of the Lawrence-based university.
Other teaching hospitals include the University of Missouri–Kansas City,with its schools of medicine, nursing, pharmacy and dentistry; KCUMB, with its College of Osteopathic Medicine, and Children’s Mercy, the pre-eminent pediatric hospital serving not just the Kansas City region, but drawing patients from the greater region and across the nation and now engaged in key pediatric research initiatives.
Even though they are well-removed from the center of the region, the area boasts sizable medical centers in St. Joseph, home to Heartland Health and its comprehensive suite of health-care services, as well as Stormont-Vail HealthCare and St. Francis Health Center in Topeka, both of which rank among the region’s 25 largest, based on annual admissions.
Among the other leading hospitals and medical centers in the region:
Truman Medical Center, on Hospital Hill overlooking Downtown, is Kansas City’s premier urban hospital, but has a thriving Truman-Lakewood in a setting closer to suburban Lee’s Summit than to the central city. It also serves as one of two teaching hospitals in the
center of Kansas City (KU Hospital is the other), providing instructional settings for UMKC’s colleges of medicine, nursing, pharmacy and dentistry.
North Kansas City Hospital, serving the broad expanse of Kansas City North of the Missouri River for more than 50 years with advanced programs in women’s health, cardiac care, orthopedics and oncology, and its Emergency Department is also considered a center of excellence.
Shawnee Mission Medical Center, which pioneered hospital-level medical care in northern Johnson County when it opened in Merriam in 1962. Not far from Downtown Kansas City, it also serves a community of more than 550,000 in the county and many more from points further distant.
Olathe Medical Center, serving the central and southern Johnson County market since 1953, and now part of a health system operating from six locations in Johnson and Miami counties. Its 250-acre site is one of the largest medical campuses in the Midwest.
And, of course, the market leader: HCA Midwest Health System. Earlier this year, this operating division of publicly owned HCA acquired St. Joseph Medical Center in south Kansas City and St. Mary’s Medical Center in Blue Springs, both of which had belonged to Carondelet Health, a division of St. Louis-based Ascension Health. With those acquisitions, HCA Midwest now accounts for roughly 30 percent of the hospital beds in this region, and now has 14 locations—11 of them full-service hospitals—around the Kansas City region.
All are part of a health-care universe that features more than 30 hospitals and a combined 5,000 beds—well more than enough to serve the baseline needs of a metro area this large. 