KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Life has been anything but normal for everyone since COVID-19, including those tasked with leading some of the largest companies in the Kansas City area.
Bob Page is CEO of the University of Kansas Health System. He hasn’t seen his adult children in months due to this pandemic. Page told 41 Action News he recently had surgery for cancer in April. Despite it all, he is among the top executives at the hospital charged with operating on the budget of one of the area’s largest healthcare systems. He agreed to talk with Anchor Kevin Holmes about how the hospital is changing and operating amid this pandemic.
“Year to date, how are you doing in terms of finances?” asked Kevin.
“We were forecasting the best fiscal year we’ve had in a long time. We’re going to be substantially less. We’re going to be about 80 percent of what we were on target to do. We lost money in March. We lost money in April,” said Page.
For the first time in 20 years, the hospital lost money in back-to-back months, according to Page. However, the hospital still managed to finish the fiscal year in the black.
“There are two groups out there, Kevin, during this time. There are the people that are just going to try and hunker down and survive and then there are the other people that will try and take full advantage of a crisis,” Page said. “I don’t mean that badly — but to really take on a leadership position and prove to people this is the place you want to be and that’s the path we want to go down.”
That path has had several twists and turns during COVID-19. Hospitals in the United States were expected to lose $200 billion between March 1 and June 30, according to a report from the American Hospital Association. Those losses are due to no money coming in from things such as elective procedures.
“You guys make so much money over electives, elective surgeries and other procedures. Those were put on pause during this pandemic. How do you ensure job security for your employees?” Kevin asked.
“Because for the last 25 years, we’ve had a formula in place here,” Page answered. “Really the formula was if we provide world class service with the best outcomes possible by the right team of people, we’ll be fine from a growth and stability standpoint.”
12,500 employees work at the University of Kansas Health System. Pages said that world class service is a big reason why they will avoid layoffs or furloughs for their employees.
When asked about how the University of Kansas Health System conducts business in six months, Page talked about telehealth.
“Last year I think we did a thousand telehealth visits,” he said. “Today since March, we’ve done over 65,000 telehealth visits. We’ve got this map that actually looks like a kid that’s got chickenpox. The red dots across the state of Kansas, Missouri,Nebraska, Oklahoma, where our new patients are that we’ve seen through telehealth. And it’s phenomenal to see that reach. And that will be a big change in our business.”
Page said the biggest thing for the public is that they know the hospital's mission of saving lives is a much bigger priority than saving money. Of the 12,500 employees at the hospital, Page says roughly 2,200 are working from home. The hospital is in the process of bringing some of those workers back, especially those in clinical support.
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