Another fact that sets Wichita apart from other cities is the percentage of doctors who belong to the local medical society — 90-95%. Here the doctors are very active and involved in the Medical Society of Sedgwick County (MSCC). This higher level of participation has been part of Wichita’s make-up for 100 years. And because it’s rare that a doctor settles into this community and doesn’t join, there’s tremendous peer pressure to be part of it. This doesn’t exist in a lot of other communities.

It’s also one of the reasons the Medical Society was key to Project Access’ success.

When the Medical Society took Project Access under its wing, it ensured that there would be an adequate number of doctors available for participation in it. It also ensured that, even after Central Plains Regional Health Care Foundation’s founding president, Dr. Paul Uhlig, left the community in 1999, Project Access would continue to be administered by the physicians and the Medical Society. Under Dr. Michael Bates’ direction as MSSC board president in 1999, the program was developed. Dr. Bates then served for two years as the board president for Central Plains as Project Access became operational.

Eventually, the leadership role was passed on to Dr. Chris Moeller. Dr. Moeller started out as chairman of the Physician’s Participation Committee. But as things evolved, he became more involved — serving on the board of the Central Plains Regional Health Care Foundation and ultimately becoming its president.

Dr. Moeller first heard of Project Access in the winter of 1999 when he was on the Medical Society’s board of directors. Dr. Uhlig came to the Medical Society to present Project Access as an idea that could work well in Sedgwick County. The board of directors agreed and approved the idea. According to Dr. Moeller, “We started organizing a community-wide physician meeting (a general membership meeting of the Medical Society) under the auspices of the Medical Society to initiate the project. It was at this meeting that we first presented the idea to the physicians. That’s when I learned even more about it than I did as a board member. And that’s when I walked up to Dr. Uhlig and said ‘I think this is the best project our Medical Society has ever been involved in as long as I’ve been here in Wichita. This is something I want to strongly support.’ ” And so Dr. Uhlig made Dr. Moeller an offer to participate in an even more involved manner.

The first step was to set up the Operations Council, to be comprised of the hospital CEOs, indigent care clinic directors, physicians, local officials, and other key people in the community. They all sat down in a very informal manner and tried to figure out how they could make this program work. Dr. Uhlig continued to emphasize that this was everyone’s project; that everyone needed to help.

For Dr. Moeller, seeing the Medical Society as a leader, coordinating city and county government involvement, the SRS (the state office of Social and Rehabilitation Services), the charitable foundations in town, the hospitals — all this community-wide involvement and coordination — that kind of leadership role was one he’d never seen from the Medical Society. The Medical Society was certainly doing some worthwhile things but never at this breadth of involvement.

Dr. Moeller pointed out that, “Dr. Uhlig was the spark, then it took on a life of its own as people got more and more involved. We had so many influential and key players in this development. To see people from the SRS and United Way get involved, it all kind of fell into place. And both Dwight Allen, head of our Medical Society, and Anne Nelson, our program director, were key in organizing all these things.”

And it was all very organized. Which was a key aspect when making their presentations. It was also key that the physicians were behind the project. It was what gave the project its legitimacy. And it was especially significant when they talked to the other parties they wanted involved. “It was very important to the city and the county that we could say we have the physicians behind us. Once they knew the doctors were there, they were willing to listen and put some money where it was needed,” said Dr. Moeller.

Meanwhile, the Medical Society continued its important task of signing up new physicians. As one who started out as part of the Physician Participation Committee, Dr. Moeller acknowledged, “One of our goals was to get as many physicians signed up as possible,” adding that “in our first year we got about 30% of the physicians in the Sedgwick County area signed up. Which doesn’t sound like a lot, but we thought that, out of a Medical Society of 850 physicians, 30% was quite good — especially when you’re talking about a new project.”

For Dr. Moeller, the biggest hurdle, after recruitment, was to keep the focus on what they were doing and to try to minimize any infighting. He explained, “We were bringing the six low-cost clinics and other health care providers together in a new partnership. The clinics were basically in competition for different sources of funding. And the hospitals were worried about the bottom line, with ER visits driving up costs. So to bring all these disparate parties together and to try to keep them focused on the goal was a huge challenge and was something that the Project Access staff had to work very hard to maintain.”