HJAR Jul/Aug 2019

Healthcare Journal of ARKANSAS I  JUL / AUG 2019 13 Editor Can you tell us about some of the things you’re working on and priorities you have? Street  First, of course, is the recruitment of sub- specialties that aren’t here today, such as pulmonol- ogy, neurology, urology, and interventional cardiol- ogy. So, a lot of the subspecial- ties that have either rotated out, or that we’ve not had for a number of decades, we are recruiting aggressively for those subspecialties to be here again. We’ve actually been successful with a few of those searches, and have 9-10 active searches cur- rently for new providers in those subspe- cialty ranks, so that’s obviously a high pri- ority. Another is adding new services. We’ll have behavioral health and a psychiatric in- patient unit here, we hope, within the next 12-18 months in El Dorado to serve South Arkansas. We’re bringing a full-service can- cer center here to our campus. We’re build- ing a facility to house cancer care, and that will probably be about 18 months out. We’re bringing theAHEC residency program back to El Dorado, to complement the one in Magnolia, and that’s exciting to work with UAMS on that project, which is probably about an 18-20 month project. Those are just a few of the new services that we’ll be adding, and we’ve partnered with Survival Flight to have a helicopter on campus in the next four months as well. There are a lot of exciting higher level services and oppor- tunities that we have to roll out here in the near future. Editor How do you have success in recruit- ing to this part of Arkansas? Street  It’s hard to recruit to Little Rock; it’s hard to recruit to Northwest Arkansas, and then you multiply that times two—it’s even harder to recruit to South Arkansas. It’s just hard to recruit in general to rural areas. We’re a majority rule state so it’s just hard to recruit out. We think bring- ing a residency program back to El Dorado will help with recruitment very much so in the future. We’re very fortunate to have a proactive think- ing city council, chamber of commerce, and as I’ve already mentioned, the Murphy Oil and Murphy USA expansion and growth. They’re a part of what we are able to brag about. As an example, Murphy Oil and Mur- phy USA are revitalizing the Murphy Arts District, and what they’ve put in place in the way of entertainment is so unique to a town with a population of 20,000. To have that to be able to use as a recruitment tool is huge. The Murphy promise, or I should say, the El Dorado promise that Murphy has helped put in place as well, is to help the young people in the El Dorado school sys- tem go on to college on scholarships that they provide through a foundation gift. It is really neat what’s going on here, and we use that in our recruitment efforts. Editor Are you involved in any mergers or acquisitions, or are you just building out? Street We’re just building out. We’re a part of CHS out of Franklin, Tennessee, and we appreciate the support that they’ve provided us. Last year we infused approximately $8 L-R: Dr. Bruce Murphy, CEO Arkansas Heart Hospital; Scott Street; Jon Tryggestad, CEO Landmark Cancer Center talking with interventional cardiologist Dr. Athanasios Stoyioglou. “It’s just hard to recruit in general to rural areas.”