- Key points from today’s guests:

Bob Page, president and CEO, The University of Kansas Health System

• 25 years ago, an independent public authority was created to operate the hospital portion of The University of Kansas Medical Center.
• At the time, the hospital was a failing organization based on every metric that mattered – patient satisfaction scores were the lowest in the country and funding was at critical levels.
• The public authority allowed the hospital to appoint a board of directors and make important decisions more quickly than going through the state process.
• We’re in the business to take care of patients and that was the focus that led to the transformation.
• We've come a long way from those early days. We're proud but we're never satisfied. Our vision is to lead the nation in carrying healing, teaching, and discovering. We are relentless in the pursuit of our vision. We will lead the nation.
• What we want people to understand the most is that the patient experience and the quality is unparalleled.
• At the end of the day, you don't have to leave Kansas City for world-class care.
• That wasn't the case 25 years ago. It is absolutely the case today, and it's absolutely because we're here in Kansas City.
• We're so grateful for all those people who over the last 25 years made this possible and who continue to support the Health System and the patients we serve.

Tammy Peterman, president – Kansas City Division, The University of Kansas Health System

• In 1998, we had great people working here, but a bad system.
• We didn't have the right resources, and we didn't have the right ability to make decisions that the organization needed to make to help improve care, because we didn't even have a board of directors.
• When we look at the culture today, it's pretty remarkable. We have 17,000 great employees and they all know the reason this organization exists is to provide great care and support to patients and their families.
• We're now a collaborative organization. We focus on the right things. We focus on people, always starting with patients, but making sure we're focused on our staff and our physicians, and the people need to have the right resources and support to do their job.
• Nurses are essential and we became magnet designated in nursing for the first time in 2006. It's a designation for nursing excellence given by the American Nurses Credentialing Center.
• You cannot have a great hospital without great nursing. And we have a great hospital, and we have great nurses. They are well educated, they're professional, they're collaborative, they work well with the medical staff.
• One of the other things that we did was implement a rapid response team that I believe served as a bit of a catalyst to help improve quality.
• It also served as a model for many other response teams, meaning getting experts and resources at the patient wherever the patient is, whether it's the bedside or it's somewhere else.
• We have 10 response teams now that help meet the needs of patients. Those response teams I think have done a remarkable job at our hospital and we have outstanding quality as a result.

Dr. Steve Stites, chief medical officer, The University of Kansas Health System

• 25 years ago, there was no focus on quality, and our patients told us that. The truth was we were not sustainable.
• We didn’t have a great “system of care” until we reorganized, which set us on the trajectory of growth we’ve been experiencing.
• The unrelenting focus on quality has made such a difference in everybody's lives.
• It is a privilege to be able to work here to be surrounded with these great people -- these great leaders, our nursing staff, everyone -- that's a privilege.
• It is a blessing to be able bring my family here to get care and to take myself here to get care because this is the best care you can get anywhere.

Dr. Gary Doolittle, medical oncologist, The University of Kansas Cancer Center

• The Health System stepped up when they opened up the Westwood campus which really provided an amazing outpatient experience for our cancer patients.
• It also allowed us to assemble different groups -- surgeons, medical oncologists, etc. -- together in the same unit.
• All of that came together to help support NCI (National Cancer Institute) designation, which was just so important for our organization.
• When the NCI designates a medical center as an NCI designated center, it's really the stamp of approval. It's like the gold standard for cancer care and all of this growth and infrastructure building had to occur before we were going to become designated.
• Now most recently, we have the top gold standard that we're now a comprehensive cancer center as designated by the NCI.

Dr. Charles Porter, medical director, The University of Kansas Health System

• In 2001, a pivotal moment happened when the Mid-America cardiology and Mid-America thoracic and cardiovascular surgeons moved as a group to the hospital.
• This move gave us a chance to be the greatest cardiovascular center in the region.
• Our goal is to deliver the best care to get the best outcomes in patients and families.
• In 2006, the Center for Advanced Health Care opened as part of a nearly $28 million expansion that included a new outpatient cardiology center, new catheterization labs, and new coronary unit operating suites.

Dr. Timothy Schmitt, director, transplantation, The University of Kansas Health System

• We're currently the only transplant center in the state of Kansas.
• In 2011, we had six separate areas where patients were seeing six different offices. And we consolidated that into a transplant center where now we have everyone together to collaborate on patient care.
• While we’ve expanded and perform higher volumes of transplants, we also have higher volumes of sicker patients.
• We're expanding into different programs like chains for kidney transplant. We're probably going to start our living donor liver transplant program in the next few months. Lung transplant will be in the near future.
• Each patient has a story, but each patient also has a whole team behind them. And I think being a part of the team to help these patients keeps us coming to work.

Morning Medical Update is on TV in October! The four-part series Cancer: Choices, Hope and Science will air on Tuesdays in October. In the Kansas City area, it’s on KCTV5 at 9:30 a.m. and in Topeka, it’s on WIBW at 9 a.m.

Monday, Oct. 2 at 8 a.m. CT is the next Morning Medical Update. It’s Pink Week -- the first week in October dedicated to all things breast cancer. On Monday, we'll follow a woman getting her very first mammogram at age 40. She has a special reason for being screened and wanted to show how simple this life saving test really is.

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