The gathering took place in The Gallery at 14th and Main with select Rotarians participating remotely via Zoom and Facebook Live. President Eric Bubb brought the group to order at 12:18pm. The meeting started with the Pledge of Allegiance followed by a moment of silence in the memory of Rotarian Denny Bolte, who passed away on Tuesday evening with 44 years of club membership to his credit. Attendees then listened to Liz Ross’ invocation that noted our abundant daily blessings, gave thanks, and acknowledged divine grace. 

Mandy Sheldon identified one meeting guest, Hannah Emerson, a Rotary scholar based in Europe. She hopes to join Club 13 at the conclusion of her studies. Club anniversaries this week include Glen Crawford, 6 years; Charlie Rogers, 33 years; Jackson Granstaff, 1 year; and Randy Sisk, 24 years. 

Past President David Hanzlick and Jared Campbell took the stage to introduce our newest club member, Liz Ross. She is the director of community outreach for FosterAdoptConnect. Her interest in membership comes from knowing like-minded people in the Kansas City community. Liz enjoys free time with her family, visiting the Lake of the Ozarks, and refurbishing furniture. 

President Eric thanked the youth camp board for serving as meeting greeters today. Rotary After Hours has three events planned for the coming weeks: 

-August 17, Rock Island Bridge Tour followed by food & beverage 

-September 9, Brook Ridge Country Club hosts the Rotary golf championship followed by a reception 

-September 27, Rotary After Hours at the KC Zoo, open to all metro-area clubs. 

Next week, club meetings going forward will include a vocational minute where members speak briefly about the work they do. Format will be short-interview, and there is a need for future interviewers. The friendship exchange with the Monterrey, Mexico club runs between September 23rd and 29th. Host families and helpers are still needed—see Eric for more information. The WestSide CAN school pep rally is tomorrow (July 29th). Heartland Chamber Music Festival is still seeking volunteers—please support them where you can. Lastly, Sunflowers for Ukraine appears at the Meadowbrook Club House in Prairie Village through August 5th. On that final day, an art auction will occur between 5:30 and 7:00 to support our partnership with Rotary International. 

At 12:26pm, President Eric introduced today’s guest speaker, Austin Jones, VP and CFO of North Kansas City Hospital & Meritas Health. He relocated to the area from Texas less than a year ago, after a long career in hospital administration in the Lone Star state. Austin shared that he attended Texas A&M and, like his brothers, earned his Eagle Scout status as a matter of family obligation. Significantly, he completed the requirements to become a licensed pilot at the age of 17, which led to adventures and misadventures. Scouting shaped his outlook on the personal service provision that healthcare involves, and how it needs to be community-centric. That led to him choosing North Kansas City Hospital for his next career phase. 

NKC Hospital opened in 1958, and today operates with 451 beds and over 4,000 employees. In the area, they have the largest occupational medicine practice and have a high rate of inpatient admissions. The annual operating budget is approximately $700 million. In terms of payments for services, their largest customer is the federal government (through Medicare) followed by about four insurance companies that dominate the market. Payments for services tend to be flat rate, depending on diagnosis, and those large customers had trouble adjusting rates in response to COVID—they were sluggish in figuring out how to diagnose and pay, while the disease was anything but sluggish in how it spread through the community. Compared to other area hospitals, North KC did not have large numbers of COVID admissions at first. But the pandemic brought a range of challenges to their organization, including the delaying of other medical procedures that generated revenue, the outflow of nurses to other markets paying premium rates, and a fair number of staff retirements in general. The ripple effect of this between 2020 and 2022 is that the financial loss of caring for COVID patients reached the $40 million mark. The federal stimulus support offset about half of this, around $20 million. Because their hospital leadership is very community-committed, they made the choice to continue offering comprehensive care, and chose not to furlough staff or reduce pay despite the pandemic hardship. With the worst of the period behind them, the organization is now revenue-positive again. 

Not all other hospitals around the country made these choices, nor have exited the pandemic in fair economic shape. The risk of closure is quite real for many small-community hospitals around the country, and the pressures for consolidation will grow. Telemedicine, with select appointments delivered in a Zoom format, will increase in quantity. Nurses will continue to be sourced from overseas, especially the Philippines.  

Austin opened the floor to questions from the attendees about his presentation. Topics raised included patient data sharing across offices and practices—Cerner, Meditech, and Epic are the big three providers, and their systems don’t all ‘talk’ to each other—the effectiveness of care given through a telemedicine or Zoom format, and how life expectancy in the US compares to the cost of health care in the country. Some also inquired about planning for a possible COVID bump in the fall of 2022. 

President Eric thanked Austin Jones for his remarks and presented him a Club 13 pen. 

Next week, the club meeting will feature Edward Cross of the Kansas Independent Oil and Gas Association, speaking on the state of that industry. On August 11th, Ron Johnson of the Astra Day School will talk about the Kansas City Autism Training Center. 

At 13:01, President Eric concluded the meeting by citing Ralph Waldo Emerson: “The first wealth is health.”  The 4-Way Test closed the session.