As the Peter Allen and Carole Bayer Sager song says, “Everything this is old is new again.”
At least in terms of management of University of Louisville Hospital and the James Graham Brown Cancer Center.
On July 1, University Medical Center again took over as manager of the two facilities following four years of a joint operating agreement with KentuckyOne Health. Both companies agreed in December to dissolve the JOA.
“While it appears that it is the ‘good old days’ it truly is a new era,” said Ken Marshall, president and chief executive officer of UofL Hospital and the James Graham Brown Cancer Center. “In the coming years, we will be a leader in our region for providing the highest quality of care in a patient-centered way. All the while, UofL Hospital will continue be the primary adult teaching hospital for the UofL School of Medicine and provide care to all who come to our doors.”
Marshall and his team have accomplished in approximately six months what typically takes at least a year – stand up an entire organization. This includes creating the executive team, hiring an entire staff and putting into place everything necessary so that patients who need care have the best experience possible.
“We were fortunate in that every single person who had been working at UofL Hospital and the Brown Cancer Center accepted our offer to continue working there under UMC management,” said Shari Kretzschmer, chief nursing officer. “This eliminated a significant amount of time in recruiting and training staff. But we continue to bring on more, high-quality staff so that the care we provide is unsurpassed in its quality.”
Some services will be purchased from KentuckyOne Health on a short-term basis, lasting no longer than 18 months. These are services such as information technology and group purchasing.
“The effort of the entire team during the past six months has been Herculean,” Marshall said. “The collaboration with our physician leadership cannot be stressed enough. What we have seen is emblematic of the attitude all of us share – it’s about our patients.”
