Kimball Health Services inks deal with Regional West

Kimball Health Services has a new affiliation.

KHS announced late Monday afternoon that it has signed a joint operating agreement with Regional West Health Services of Scottsbluff. The agreement is effective immediately, according to a press release. KHS previously had a joint operating agreement with Cheyenne Regional Hospital.

“We are thrilled to enter into this agreement with Regional West,” Ken Hunter, CEO of Kimball Health Services, said in a press release. “Through this operating agreement we can deliver more specialized care to our community.”

Hunter said the agreement with Regional West is a five-year deal. It includes some out clauses that allows either size to get out of the agreement with six months notice, he said.

Hunter said the new joint operating agreement with Regional West is much more extensive and provides for things such as strategic planning, involving more specialists in Kimball and providing more collaboration with hospitals in the region.

One example that Hunter gave was labwork. He said KHS will use Regional West as a reference lab, and the reference lab for Regional West lab is the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota.

Hunter said one benefit to the agreement that patients will immediately see is more specialists in Kimball. Dr. Vincent Bjorling will start seeing cancer patients in Kimball on Jan. 14, and Dr. Jeffrey Holloway, a general surgeon, will begin to perform surgeries here.

“The thing that is of primary importance to us, this agreement adds specialty services here in Kimball without people having to go out of town,” Hunter said.

The KHS CEO said additional services will be offered, but are not yet ready to be announced.

In addition to the five-year JOA with Regional West, Hunter said KHS inked a three-year ancillary agreement with Cheyenne Regional. He said this allows cardiac patients with services through Cheyenne Regional to maintain their current physicians. He said the cardiac services there are very well-respected and did not want to see that come to an end.

“We didn’t want to disrupt that if we could help it,” he said.

Hunter added that for patients who will be transferred from KHS to another hospital, they still have a choice of where they will be transferred. The new agreement does not change that. Hunter said patients who are transferred go to many places, such as Scottsbluff, Cheyenne and Sidney.

“If we can’t treat someone here, we want them to go where they want to go,” he said.

Hunter said the agreement with Regional West offers many changes that people will not see, including additional training for staff members.

“There are a lot of new avenues through Regional West for education and staff development. One example is the (emergency room). We’ll send our ER people to shadow Dr. (David) Cornutt there, especially if they are new to the ER. That’s very beneficial to us, because they see more people in ER there in a day than we see in two weeks.”

Hunter and Jim Cederburg, chairman of the Kimball County Hospital Board of Trustees, approached the Kimball County Commissioners about changing affiliations on Nov. 18. At the meeting, Hunter said there were issues with Cheyenne Regional, such as not delivering on certain things, that necessitated the switch.

“As a critical access hospital, we are required to have a referral relationship with a tertiary, larger hospital. We had that with Cheyenne Regional and we want to work to switch that to Regional West out of Scottsbluff. They have a much tighter management agreement than what we have had in the past and there are specific performance requirements laid out in the contract,” Hunter said on Nov. 18.

Hunter stressed at the Nov. 18 meeting that ownership would not change hands and the current hospital board would still make all decisions for KHS.

“The board of trustees will still have the same power that they have always had, but with this we will have access to a lot of new ideas and avenues of what we can do for them and what they can do for us,” Cederburg said on Nov. 18.

Hunter said Tuesday that John Mentgen, the new Regional West CEO, has given him optimism regarding the new agreement.

“The first time I met Mr. Mengen, he asked me to make a list of the ways they can help us at the hospital, and then to make a list of ways that we could help them. In a lot of ways, people think that bigger is better, but that’s not necessarily the case. Bigger hospitals are not better than us, they’re just different,” Hunter said.

Mentgen joined Regional West after spending time working for smaller hospitals in Tennessee, which Hunter said can only help KHS.

“John really understands the role for a rural critical access hospital and has an appreciation for it,” Hunter said.

“By partnering, we can evaluate and discuss enhancing health care services for the community,” Mentgen said in a press release. “We look forward to our new relationship with Kimball Health Services.”

Regional West, which has its headquarters in Scottsbluff, employs over 1,900 people in a variety of locations, according to a press release. The hospital employs more than 110 physicians in addition to 25 consulting specialists.

Reporter Sydney Yalshevec contributed to this story.