HJAR Mar/Apr 2024

HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF ARKANSAS I  MAR / APR 2024 11 Editor Share with us your overview and mission of Baxter Health. Peterson We have a purpose statement that says that we want “to champion access to compassionate high-quality care by remaining independent, strategically comprehensive and community-focused." What that means to me, and I think how the Baxter Health team really looks at it, is there are a lot of people who choose to live in rural, North Central Arkansas. It's a beautiful area. The lakes, the trees, the hiking trails, the biking trails — you can just go on and on about that. Just because you choose to live in a place like that, you should not have to choose to not have healthcare or access to quality healthcare and especially compassionate healthcare. We really believe, here at Baxter Health, that not only do we want to care for you, but we want to care about you. Everybody who gets into healthcare wants to help people, but then we get tied up with our comput- ers, telephone calls that we have to make, or the thought process. We still deliver the high-quality clinical care, but that person doesn't realize how much we do care for them. Sometimes we have to take an extra 30 or 60 seconds and make sure that we develop that relationship with them and that they know we're there to help them. That's what we're trying to do, and that's why we're in the business — to help people. Editor You changed your name a while back to Baxter Health. What initiated that change? Peterson We were coming out of COVID — or we thought we were coming out of COVID — and we wanted to keep our growth going. We tried to do some research and look at who we were, what we changed to, and where we are going in the future. What we noticed was that Baxter Regional Medical Center had a very good reputation, at least we thought so, and our research showed that it did. Everybody thought that Baxter Regional Medical Center was one building at 624 Hospital Drive in Mountain Home, Arkansas. We have over 40 different locations in 11 different counties in North Central Arkan- sas, covering about 7,500 square miles. We're in a town of 13,500 people. Accord- ing to the Arkansas Business Journal , we're the 10th largest hospital in Arkansas. We had over 435,000 patient visits last year, and that's a lot of lives that we're touching — a lot of lives that we're helping. I believe that allows people to live in a rural area with confidence that they can have access to that compassionate, high-quality care. We wanted to make sure people knew that when you walk into a clinic in Fulton County, Stone County, or Boone County, and it says Baxter Health on it, you're part of Baxter Health that's connected to the hos- pital here at 624 Hospital Drive, but that's a whole health system. Editor I was interviewing a CEO of a community hospital just the other day, and she was sharing with me how important the community was in keeping that hospital going and thriving. How does that work in your area? Peterson Seriously, we are so blessed to be located in Mountain Home and in North Central Arkansas. First of all, we have, I think, the second-largest volunteer organization in the state. We have over 450 who volunteer over 67,000 hours a year at the hospital. That's just since COVID. Prior to COVID, we were larger than that, actually. That's 32 or 33 individuals every single day here in the hospital, helping us. You can see them. The governor just came for a visit the other day. It was just amazing how every place we walked, there was a yellow shirt — because our volunteers wear yellow — escorting a patient out in a wheelchair, helping somebody find directions. Every place we looked, we saw a yellow volunteer, and it was very noticeable. That's what we see every day. Not only do they volunteer that many hours, but they probably give about $560,000 a year on average to the hospital. That's very, very nice and helpful, too. The community support that we get from Mountain Home, and both Baxter and Mar- ion County, is incredible. Our foundation raises about $2.5 million a year on average just to help support the hospital. We could not be the hospital that we are without that community support, without the founda- tion raising that amount of money, and then, turning around and basically giving it to the hospital. In the last year, we received a gift of $1.7 million to remodel our fifth floor. We received a $450,000 gift to purchase three ultrasounds. We received about a $500,000 gift to purchase two new ambulances. If you walk through the hospital, you would be amazed and impressed at how many dif- ferent plaques there are, reminding us that’s there because somebody contributed, or donated, to this hospital and helped us out. We have a very modern facility for a hospi- tal in a rural community, and that is because of the community support that we get. Editor That's nice to hear. What specific healthcare needs and challenges does the rural population in your area face? Peterson I think there are two needs out there. Well, probably more, but in a broad- brush sense, there are two types of needs in a rural area. They don't really differ that much from an urban area. That's why I believe that you should really try to be as comprehensive as you can be and can afford, in a rural area, to be able to help those people as close to home as possible — that's how they're going to get help, if they can get it close to home. But, I think there's that aspect of wellness in trying to make an environment that's eas- ily accessible to healthy foods and healthy lifestyle, first. Then, there's access to care once you get ill. How do you take care of that once you are ill? I think those are the two big-picture divisions that I see and what we try to address in the rural environment. A lot of times, if you look in rural commu- nities — and I need to watch how I say this