According to the Avanced-Monticellonian Newspaper, The Drew Memorial Health System Board of Directors met Wednesday, Jan. 23rd for their regularly scheduled meeting with representatives from Baptist Health to discuss partnership options.
“We have been having discussions about what some of our options might be given the challenges we have been dealing with lately,” said Chairman Mike Akin. “We have invited Doug Weeks and Troy Wells from Baptist Health to come down and visit with us. As you know, they have been successful in having some kind of alliance with other hospitals and they have done that for a long time.”
Wells, CEO of Baptist Health System opened the conversation by giving information about his background in rural healthcare. “I have been with Baptist since 2006 and we now have four regional hospitals in our group, Arkedelphia, Heber Springs, Malvern, and Stuttgart. These hospitals have been very successful with our model.”
In response, “We’ve made a lot of progress physically at this hospital and we provide a lot of great services,” Hospital Board Member Carl Lucky stated. “But, we are struggling to keep the right people in the right jobs for a long enough time to get things accomplished.”
Lucky then posed the question to the representatives from Baptist and asked how they would handle the difficult staffing situation.”
In response, Wells stated, ” Arkedelphia doesn’t have to worry about that. They are not dependent on this one person that knows how to do this one particular job. This does not apply to the nurse at the bedside but it does apply to the coder, the biller, the people that understand the computer systems.”
Wells went on to indicate that there was always someone available within the Baptist Health System that can do office/administrative type jobs.
The operating statement provided to the board members and media stated that for December, the hospital had a loss of $1,057,021. Cash on hand decreased from 138.07 days of available operating cash to 26.78.
