Satellite kidney transplant clinic opens in Wichita

Saint Luke’s Hospital of Kansas City opened its new kidney transplant clinic Wednesday at 1035 N. Emporia, Suite 185.

The clinic will fill some of the void left by Via Christi when the organization decided in May to not reopen its transplant program, which it suspended in 2012.

Although patients will still not be able to receive kidney transplants in Wichita, the new clinic will provide patients pre- and post-operative care locally.

“We’re honored to open up this clinic, and we’re honored to be able to serve this community in a different way, in a boots-on-the-ground and real way,” said Saint Luke CEO Julie Quirin.

This is the first satellite transplant clinic Saint Luke’s has opened, said Christie Gooden, surgical director for Saint Luke’s kidney transplant team, but it is looking into starting them in other areas.

“There are a lot of underserved areas in Kansas and Missouri, and for patients it’s really difficult to come back and forth to Kansas City, so we are looking into options for providing care to other areas that need this type of help,” Gooden said.

Living donors will also be able to have their pre- and post-operative workups done at the clinic, Gooden said.

Seven transplant staff members from Via Christi’s former program were hired by Saint Luke’s for the clinic, said Gary Sigle, himself a former Via Christi employee. He will serve as the Wichita administrator for the new St. Luke clinic.

“There’s no way we could pull something like this off without a team in place ready to go,” he said.

As soon as Sigle heard Via Christi’s decision to not restart its program, he immediately called his contacts at Saint Luke’s and had a meeting the next week about starting the clinic.

“It was literally five minutes, one call to the next call,” he said.

Nephrologist Dennis Ross with Kansas Nephrology Physicians said his practice was happy that Saint Luke’s decided to open a clinic in Wichita. There are between 1,000 and 1,500 patients on dialysis in the region, Ross said.

“It will allow our patients to get their entire transplant evaluation here without having to travel to Kansas City, Omaha, Denver or Oklahoma City,” Ross said. “In addition, after the transplant they may be able to be followed sooner at home and therefore not have to stay at the transplant center for extended periods.”

The clinic saw its first 16 patients on Tuesday, Sigle said.

The new office includes a waiting room, two exam rooms, offices and a conference room that will have video conferencing for meetings between physicians in Kansas City and Wichita.

In May, Via Christi officials announced they were ending plans to restart the program, despite efforts to recruit surgeons, hiring a new transplant coordinator and moving and renovating an area of the hospital for transplant coordination.

Via Christi suspended the program in May 2012 after four patients who had received transplants in the previous 12 months died within a three-week period and another suffered kidney failure but lived. Hospital officials said an investigation of the deaths showed no common threads.

The reason the hospital decided not to move forward was to focus more on population health and prevention, Carl Rider, chief clinical administrative officer for Via Christi Hospitals Wichita, said in a previous interview with The Eagle.

The kidney transplant program at Via Christi originally started in 1981 and had performed more than 1,100 transplants.

In 2012, Via Christi’s program was on track to perform about 50 transplants, which is a relatively small number, Ross said.

As of Wednesday, there are 101,196 candidates for kidney transplants nationwide, according to the national Organ Procurement and Transplant Network.

In Kansas, it’s more common for people to have a deceased donor than a living donor. In 2013, there were 91 people who received kidney transplants from deceased donors and 21 people who received a kidney from a living donor.

Clinic appointments will be held on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, Sigle said.

For more information, contact the clinic at 316-303-1045.

This story was originally published August 27, 2014 at 7:16 PM with the headline "Satellite kidney transplant clinic opens in Wichita."