BryanLGH Medical Center officials unveiled a cardiac-care "hospital within a hospital" Tuesday, promising it will streamline care, improve coordination between staff and physicians, enhance quality and i
MARK ANDERSEN / Lincoln Journal Star | Posted: Tuesday, June 24, 2008 7:00 pm
BryanLGH Medical Center officials unveiled a cardiac-care “hospital within a hospital” Tuesday, promising it will streamline care, improve coordination between staff and physicians, enhance quality and increase patient satisfaction.
Heart-shaped mylar balloons filled the entryway of BryanLGH East for the kickoff, demonstrating the importance hospital officials placed on the news.
The most obvious change noticeable to patients will be new black and red uniforms for roughly 320 medical center employees involved in cardiac care.
Unlike many recent changes at BryanLGH, this one involves no investment in brick and mortar, no physical reorganization of staffs, no expansion of medical services. A hospital news release calls the change an “enhanced relationship.”
It’s mostly organizational — a sharing of power by hospital administrators with cardiac physicians of BryanLGH Heart Institute.
BryanLGH Medical System CEO Kim Russel said the shift will consolidate inpatient and outpatient cardiac care for BryanLGH Heart Institute patients, allowing for seamless care delivery.
“It takes the best of the specialty hospital world and the best of the expanded medical center available at BryanLGH,” she said.
Dr. Clyde Meckel, the institute’s executive medical director, said the arrangement will deliver the benefits of a specialty hospital but from within the wider medical expertise and capability of a general hospital.
The new uniforms and new hospital signs that will let people know when they’ve entered a specialized cardiac area inside BryanLGH are more than fluff, Meckel said. They’re part of creating a separate identity for cardiac care.
Already an oddity because it identifies itself as one hospital spread over two campuses, BryanLGH is saying with the change it wants to be seen less as a department store and more like a mall of specialty retailers.
The change also contributes to a growing history of jockeying for Lincoln’s profitable heart market.
In the 1990s, what is now BryanLGH worked with physicians from the Nebraska Heart Institute to make Lincoln a center for cardiac care.
In 2001, Nebraska Heart physicians claimed overcrowding and delays at BryanLGH led them to create a specialty heart hospital to increase capacity. Then-BryanLGH CEO Lynn Wilson said physicians wanted to capture the hospital’s heart care profits.
The hospital worked with new and breakaway cardiac doctors to create a competing physician group, BryanLGH Heart Institute.
Since then, the Nebraska Heart Institute Heart Hospital has opened in southeast Lincoln.
The BryanLGH Heart Institute has evolved from a for-profit entity in partnership with BryanLGH into a nonprofit subsidiary of the medical center.
In recent years, BryanLGH Heart Institute doctors physically moved into BryanLGH Medical Center.
Nebraska Heart Institute physicians have continued to do a few procedures at BryanLGH, while BryanLGH Heart Institute doctors have done procedures at BryanLGH Medical Center but not at the Nebraska Heart Hospital.
Under this latest change, the Nebraska Heart Institute physicians will no longer be able to do procedures at BryanLGH Medical Center. Physicians from both institutes will continue to do procedures at Saint Elizabeth Regional Medical Center.
Nebraska Heart officials could not be reached Tuesday.
Dr. Ryan Whitney, chief medical officer for BryanLGH Heart Institute, denied the new hospital within a hospital arrangement is an attempt to replicate the Nebraska Heart model.
At BryanLGH, he said, doctors will not share in hospital profits; rather, they will gain the ability to influence hospital direction without having to invest in a new multimillion dollar center like Nebraska Heart Hospital.
Said Meckel: “It’s an investment not of money. It’s an investment of time.”
Reach Mark Andersen at 473-7238 or mandersen@journalstar.com.