HJAR May/Jun 2024

HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF ARKANSAS I  MAY / JUN 2024 15 of what we're doing. I was mental-health- friendly before I got into this. As a matter of fact, back in med school, I was the state hospital extern for a whole year. I worked at the state hospital at UAMS admitting every patient from Arkansas that was coming in. So, I was friendly with mentally ill people from the get-go, and that helped me in my practice. I had a little bit of insight, read a few psychiatry books. Actually, I read sitting up there in that darn state hospital; you read your psychiatry book front to cover. Then I just sort of stayed with it. And having had a lot of dealings with substance abuse, that made me aware of what I needed to do. Editor For yourself. Collier Yes, for myself. I think that's the point with any professional, any doctor, or provider. Throughmy professional life, I was on the medical board too for, I don't know, eight years; and that's all the medical board is — you listen to issues that physicians are having. I listened to every problem that every doctor asked, so I learned a lot in doing that. I think that was '92 or '90 to '98. Editor What do you want your legacy to be? Collier Oh, the legacy is definitely the system that we built, and I think we're at the very top of it. It definitely can be improved; and I think it's not about opening any more clinics, even though I'm trying to slow that down, but it's about providing better services. It's about capping off some of these centers of excellence. It's about recruiting some specialists who are going to work with us. I don't want another 75 clinics. That's crazy. That's not where I want to go. Editor How many do you have right now? Collier Well, we have 75. And if you count the pharmacies, there's always some HR problem somewhere. This week, we're having a good one. Nobody's been fired this week, but there's always that HR deal. I told you that I took the board certification,ACHE, and one of the components of that is HR. You have to make a 70 to pass, and I made a 74. It was the hardest thing on the dang test. I just barely passed it, but I know why now. People that run these big companies, we're looking at over 1500 employees. That responsibility now is becoming greater than patient care responsibility — taking care of those 1500 employees. I know a lot of times, you might hear that they're brought in a vacuum cleaner plant to some little town, and it's going to employ 60 people; and everybody will go, all the dig- nitaries. And I'm thinking, "Hey, here we got ARcare." And we're talking some high- paid people, 1500 of them, and our payroll is just astronomical. But we have to take care of those people. We need the stability in order to continue to run the operation, and we need people to come back to these rural areas. Editor Yes, we do. Thank you for what you do and for taking the time to do this today. Collier I enjoyed it. Editor It's been a pleasure. n