JoCo sees hospital building boom while underserved areas of Kansas City are ignored

AdventHealth is set to build an 85-bed hospital in a wealthy area of south Overland Park that already has four full-service hospitals within 10 miles.

Last month it announced plans to build yet another one: a 200-bed hospital in Lenexa, just west of the Interstate 435 loop, also a well-to-do area.

AdventHealth leaders said they were responding to demand from a growing part of the metro.

But there’s another reason to build on the far edge of the area’s wealthiest county.

“By putting your hospitals beyond the outside of the ongoing growth or sprawl within a metro area, you have eliminated most of the poor people,” said James Dockins, a professor at Rockhurst University who studies health care management.

And while residents of lower-income areas must do without, he said, Johnson County patients may actually face higher health care bills because of the medical building boom there.