Saint Luke’s Hospital of Kansas City to open Kidney Transplant Satellite Clinic in Wichita

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — For more than 30 years, patients in need of a kidney transplant in Wichita and surrounding areas have been able to receive high-quality, excellent care close to home. Now Saint Luke’s Hospital of Kansas City will maintain that tradition by opening Saint Luke’s Kidney Transplant Satellite Clinic at 1035 N. Emporia, Suite 185, in Wichita, Kan., in August 2014. 

Saint Luke’s Kidney Transplant Satellite Clinic – Wichita will collaborate with Wichita physicians of all specialties to provide evaluation for kidney transplant and pre- and post-transplant care locally. The Kidney Transplant Satellite Clinic will employ a team of eight employees from the Wichita area, all of whom worked together previously in transplant services. The team will be led by an abdominal transplant administrator who will oversee transplant coordinators, a transplant financial specialist, a social worker, and outreach and compliance staff.

“Saint Luke’s has a long-standing commitment to partnering with communities and local physicians to provide expert care close to home whenever possible,” said Julie Quirin, CEO of Saint Luke’s Hospital of Kansas City. “With the opening of Saint Luke’s Kidney Transplant Satellite Clinic in Wichita, our hope is to make it easier for patients in the Wichita region who are in need of a kidney transplant to receive excellent care close to home, and ultimately, to receive exceptional care during their transplant surgery at Saint Luke’s Hospital in Kansas City.”  

Patients evaluated at the Satellite Clinic will be placed on Saint Luke’s Hospital’s kidney transplant waiting list. Saint Luke’s Kidney Transplant Program offered average wait times of 14.8 months in 2013, significantly less than the national average of 70 months as reported by the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients (SRTR).

“Saint Luke’s Hospital is known for its commitment to quality and excellent outcomes, and we are eager to extend that level of care to this community in partnership with physicians here,” said Gary Sigle, Saint Luke’s abdominal transplant administrator, who will oversee the Kidney Transplant Satellite Clinic in Wichita.

Since performing the first kidney transplant in the Kansas City area in 1969, the Saint Luke’s Kidney Transplant Program has performed more than 1,400 kidney transplants, making it one of the most experienced programs in the region. Saint Luke’s Hospital is a Medicare-approved transplant facility.

Saint Luke’s Hospital abdominal transplant surgeons who will evaluate patients at Saint Luke’s Kidney Transplant Satellite Clinic in Wichita include Jameson Forster, M.D., director of abdominal transplant at Saint Luke’s Hospital, who previously led the Liver Transplant Program at the University of Kansas Hospital for 25 years, and Lee S. Cummings, M.D., who completed his surgical/transplantation fellowship at Georgetown University Hospital in Washington, D.C.

Saint Luke’s Health System

Saint Luke’s Health System consists of 10 area hospitals and several primary and specialty care practices, and provides a range of inpatient, outpatient, and home care services. Founded as a faith-based, not-for-profit organization, our mission includes a commitment to the highest levels of excellence in health care and the advancement of medical research and education. The health system is an aligned organization in which the physicians and hospitals assume responsibility for enhancing the physical, mental, and spiritual health of people in the metropolitan Kansas City area and the surrounding region.

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