Via Christi, Wichita Clinic say partnership will bring better care at less cost

Delivering higher quality health care at a better price prompted the area's largest health system to acquire the area's largest physician group, officials said Friday.

Via Christi Health and Wichita Clinic said they reached an agreement in which the clinic will become part of the Via Christi system.

The agreement that will create the new Via Christi Clinic is expected to become final within three to four months.

Neither Via Christi nor Wichita Clinic would disclose financial terms of the deal.

Once complete, Wichita Clinic's 12 locations in the Wichita metropolitan area — the clinic plans to add a 13th office next month at the Via Christi Hospital on St. Teresa medical office building in west Wichita — would change their names to Via Christi.

Kevin Conlin, Via Christi Health's CEO, said no layoffs of Wichita Clinic staff are planned after the agreement is finalized. Wichita Clinic has 160 physicians and 1,030 employees.

"Part of our communications to current employees of the Wichita Clinic is everybody has been asked to stay in their same roles," he said.

But combining the clinic's back-office operations with Via Christi's means "over time, we'll need to figure out how to integrate... because we're essentially duplicating" functions, Conlin said.

Conlin said Friday's agreement was about preparing for the future.

He said the addition of Wichita Clinic physicians will enable Via Christi to address a changing health care system in which providers will be expected to deliver better care at less cost. Doctors order the care, and hospitals and outpatient centers deliver it.

"Our view is there must be a tighter alignment of hospitals with physicians to deliver on those two (expectations)," Conlin said.

He said patients, employers, insurers and the federal government "are all in agreement... that they're paying too much for the delivery of health care in the United States. And we're hearing it locally."

The "tighter alignment" between hospitals and doctors will better control the cost of care, Conlin said, through measures such as eliminating unnecessary tests and procedures.

Wichita Clinic physician and chief medical officer Robert Kenagy — who will become senior vice president of Via Christi Physician Services — said there were a number of factors that led to the agreement.

"If you first start and look at the health care landscape, not just what's coming from the health care reform effort in Washington (D.C.), but if you look at what's been talked about in the Wichita Business Coalition on Health Care... clearly there's a need to begin looking at innovations in care delivery," he said.

Wichita Clinic physicians were also attracted to Via Christi's vision of having greater physician leadership across its system, Kenagy said.

"We have a lot of what's attractive to Via Christi, and we will be able to maintain that physician governance, leadership and involvement," he said. "So there are lots of good reasons to consider this."

The combining of Wichita Clinic with Via Christi raises the question of whether its physicians will refer patients to providers outside Via Christi, including chief competitor Wesley Medical Center.

"We do not expect that the patients that need to be hospitalized who are under the care of a Wichita Clinic physician would all have to come to Via Christi," Conlin said.

Wesley Medical Center CEO Hugh Tappan said he doesn't think the agreement will affect its business relationship with Wichita Clinic doctors.

"Wesley has had a successful relationship with Wichita Clinic physicians since the clinic has been in existence," Tappan said in a statement. "We are proud of that relationship. Our plans are to maintain those relationships well into the future."

Ron Whiting, executive director of the Wichita Business Coalition on Health Care — a consortium of employers, health care providers and insurers — said the agreement is "neither inherently good nor bad."

The goal of his group is to foster a system of health care providers that is accessible to all of the community and that provides a better quality of care less expensively. Via Christi and Wichita Clinic are members of the coalition, Whiting said.

"We have called for a greater coordination of care, a better collaboration of providers," Whiting said.

"On the face of it, this agreement would seem to address that."

Time will tell whether the deal is good for employers and their employees. Whiting said there are instances where such combinations have led to higher prices and costs.

"The proof will be in the execution," he said. But "these kinds of consolidations can create (greater coordination of care and better collaboration) to happen."

This story was originally published November 20, 2010 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Via Christi, Wichita Clinic say partnership will bring better care at less cost."