Healing Heart

		Louisville's Healing Center

By Barbara Myerson Katz

At the heart of downtown Louisville there exists a community that is unique in Kentucky.

It is a 24 square-block crossroads of activity in the medical profession, where teaching, research, and patient care all come together, and where each of these disciplines is strengthened and improved by the influence of the others. It is a center of healing where 12,000 doctors, nurses, technicians, and other medical professionals practice, teach, study, collaborate, and care for more than 250,000 pants each year. It is also a center of economic growth, providing more than $1 billion medical services each year and contributing more than $50 million annually in and local tax revenues.

Modern-day medical and economic miracle, Louisville's downtown medical center its affiliated hospitals, regularly receives national and international recognition for ,research and treatment programs in heart disease, hand and microsurgery, organ transplantation, and trauma, among others. It includes four hospitals-Alliant Health System, made up of Kosair Children’s Hospital, Norton Hospital, and Alliant Medical Pavilion; Jewish Hospital HealthCare Services; and the University of Louisville Hospital; as well as other medical facilities such as Frazier Rehabilitation Center and the James Graham Brown Center for Cancer Research.

At its hub is the U of L Health Sciences Center, with its Schools of Medicine, Dentistry, Nursing, and Allied Health Sciences, which bring cutting edge medical research and the latest developments in treatment to patient care on a daily basis.

"The university is the spark plug," explains Henry Wagner, president and CEO of Jewish Hospital HealthCare Services. "It's the core of what lets the medical center be a medical center. The 160-year-old medical school boasts an ongoing history as a regional pioneer in health care.

U of L School of Medicine faculty, for example, performed the first adult open heart surgery and the first liver transplant in Kentucky. The state's first hospital-based air ambulance also took flight here. Wagner credits these achievements to a unique partnership between private and academic medicine in Louisville, forged in part by the research interests of university scientists working in both laboratory and clinical settings.

Through this partnership, the center has developed into a medical metropolis, with a payroll of more than $463 million, accounting for one in six jobs in downtown Louisville. It serves almost 40 percent of Louisville-area hospital patients, and over half of all nonresident patients from throughout the region, so it's also a significant source of so-called "export earnings" that would not otherwise flow into the local economy.

And the downtown medical center continues to grow. The new $28 million Donald Baxter Health Sciences Center research building is scheduled to open in 1999, funded jointly by the Baxter family, the state, the university, Jewish Hospital, and Alliant Health System.

Plans for the new research building reflect the traditions of the past and a vision for the future, in which cutting-edge research is essential to the health of thousands of patients-as well as the medical center.

"There's a tremendous amount of energy, there's a tremendous amount of interest in expanding the research agenda from what it is," notes Wagner, which will allow the university to continue to attract top health care professionals, along with new ideas and additional research dollars.

School of Medicine Vice President for Health Affairs and Dean Donald Kmetz believes that this emphasis on research, and the outstanding investigators and outside funding that will come to U of L as a result, "will provide a significant boost to the local economy' over the next 10 years. (continued below)

U of L's School of Nursing

U of L's School of Nursing is an intregal component of health care in Kentucky. A new Neonatal Nurse Practitioner program at the school, University of Louisville Hospital, and Kosair Children's Hospital is creating new, highly skilled members for neonatology health care. From left: clinical associate Tracey Block, a U of L nursing student; Ginger Harrell, neonatal nurse practitioner and U of L instructor; and Kosair orientation coordinator Kellie Woodruff discuss treatment of infant Mackenzie Taylor Kyle.

U of L's HSC Key to Louisville's Future Economic Growth

Now more than ever, Louisville is rallying behind the U of L Health Sciences Center in an effort to increase local economic development.
In a study conducted for the Louisville Chamber of Commerce last year, economic consultant M. Ross Boyle found that among comparable cities, Louisville was average in economic standing in all but two areas: health and distribution. An intensified effort to build those two economic niches, Boyle said, could help Louisville become "one of the most competitive locations for business in the central United States."

Responding to the Boyle report, the chamber formed a task force to plot Louisville's future. The task force reported in August 1997 that the city should look to U of L as an internationally recognized source of research and

expertise to support the economic development efforts. The report also recommended creating endowed chairs for research in the medical sciences and recruit them by next year.

Nancy Martin, U of Ls vice president for research, says answering the chamber's call will be part of U of Us goal for the future, and especially the Challenge for Excellence. "The Challenge ... lays out an ambitious set of goals for the University of Louisville," Martin says. "I've been working with faculty, deans, other vice presidents, the president and the provost to build research infrastructure, recruit new faculty colleagues, and develop collaborative interdisciplinary programs"

Excellence in teaching and research further enhances the quality of patient care as well, notes Stephen Williams, CEO of Alliant Health System. "A lot of folks don't appreciate how connected the research program is with the clinical program," he says. The university and its Schools of Medicine, Dentistry, Nursing, and Allied Health Sciences "act as a catalyst to make very progressive things happen in the laboratory, and ultimately, in the medical center's varied patient care settings.

U of L School of Medicine alumnus and surgeon Hoyt D. Gardner served as president of the American Medical Association from 1979 to 1980, and brings home a national perspective. Like Williams, Gardner believes that Louisville benefits from the unusual degree of cooperation between the university and allied institutions in the downtown medical center, where teaching, research, and patient care all intersect and thrive. "We're very fortunate in Louisville to have good harmony between the private sector and the public sector," Gardner says. "In places where there is less harmony, (health) care is not as good, or (the health care) business is not as good."

Perhaps the ultimate endorsement of the importance of the university to its medical center partners was the deal struck in October 1995 which formally brought together Jewish Hospital HealthCare Services and Alliant Health System to jointly operate U of 12s hospital and related facilities through 2010, as University Medical Center, Inc. - a move recognized nationally as a model that significantly strengthens both academic medicine and private, nonprofit health care.

The School of Medicine is not the only hub of research within the Health Sciences Center. U of L's Schools of Dentistry, Nursing, and Allied Health Sciences are also actively engaged in research and clinical applications as key components of their training programs. The proximity of the schools and the allied hospitals in the downtown medical center complex creates opportunities for the advancement of knowledge and implementation that would not otherwise exist.

Like the medical school, the School of Dentistry has a long and distinguished history, over a century old. "It's wonderful to have a medical school with which you can share faculty in basic sciences," notes dental school Dean Roland Hutchinson. "By being in a health sciences center where these departments are large, you get a much more diverse faculty and research opportunities that would not otherwise be available." More than 100,000 annual patient visits to the U of L School of Dentistry are thereby enhanced as students and faculty apply state-of-the-art research and technology to patient care.

School of Dentistry Associate Dean for Research Ronald Doyle notes that while dental schools around the country are not traditionally strong in this regard, "U of L has emerged as a leader in oral biology research," with faculty members who are respected as world-class in their fields.

The School of Nursing likewise both benefits from and adds to the resources of the Health Sciences Center. Dean Mary H. Mundt explains that having a nursing program in the Health Sciences Center allows the school to have teams working together toward quality outcomes in patient care in all of the center's clinical settings.

A nursing school located in the heart of an academic health sciences center can take advantage of the same basic science instructors who teach medical and dental students. And the allied institutions also provide support for key training programs, as in the neonatal nurse practitioner program recently established in conjunction with the university's Department of Pediatrics, and funded jointly by the School of Nursing and Kosair Children's Hospital.

U of Us School of Allied Health Sciences also draws on and contributes to the array of resources in the downtown medical complex. Clinical Laboratory Science Professor Susan Miller notes that health practitioners who fall under the umbrella of allied health care -including physical and respiratory therapists, clinical laboratory technicians, and nuclear medicine and radiologic technologists -together make up 60 percent of the health care work force.

U of L allied health sciences students and faculty carry the latest techniques in their respective fields directly to patients in the downtown medical center. "We've become involved in point-of-care testing," Miller explains. "Instead of centralizing everything... we try to provide services at the patient's bedside as much as possible... to offer better patient care."

Allied health sciences faculty are also involved in nationally recognized research in their fields, and in initiatives to enhance science education in the public schools.

The School of Allied Health Sciences also includes a graduate program in expressive therapies, the first of its kind in the United States when it was established 25 years ago by U of L Professor Sandra Graves. Research in this field is relatively new and growing, but Graves and other U of L faculty and students are recognized regularly by the American Art Therapy Association - an organization of over 4,000 professionals nationwide, which began with a meeting on the U of L campus in 1969.

The impact of the Health Sciences Center, then, clearly extends beyond Louisville's downtown medical center itself and the surrounding community, throughout the region and beyond.

The university "brings the agenda of teaching and research to the hospitals that have chosen to locate next door," notes Henry Wagner. "It's the driving force for keeping the sophistication and the higher order of medical services available and focused within the medical center."

U of L, says Wagner, has aggressively advanced leading-edge medical services for the community, so that there isn't any medical problem that cannot be handled here.

And the research and treatment programs that enhance the quality and viability of health care at home are bringing the Louisville Medical Center, with U of 1:s Health Sciences Center at its heart, recognition from around the country and around the world.

Barbara Myerson Katz is a free-lance writer based in Louisville.

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