ARcare doctor on top in pay

The chief executive of Arkansas’ largest community health center was paid more than $500,000 in 2011, more than twice as much as any other community health center director in the state, according to a report submitted to a legislative committee Friday.

According to the report and filings with the Internal Revenue Service, Dr. Steven Collier, chief executive of Augusta-based ARcare, earned $536,504 in 2011, the most recent year for which an IRS filing was available.

The next highest-paid community health-center chief executive, Dr. Susan Ward-Jones of the West Memphis-based East Arkansas Family Health Center, earned $238,992 the same year, an IRS filing shows.

Jerry White, director of River Valley Primary Care Services, was identified in the legislative-audit report as the lowest-paid health-center director, receiving a salary of $73,896 in 2007. The report said more recent IRS filings didn’t list White’s salary.

The variation in salaries among the top officials at the state’s 12 health centers, nonprofits that receive federal and state grants to provide health care in certain areas, surprised some members of the Legislature’s public-health committees, which discussed the report Friday.

“I thought it was a little bit excessive,” Rep. Mark McElroy, D-Tillar, said of the salaries of both Collier and Ward-Jones.

Rep. Kim Hammer, R-Benton, said Collier’s salary seemed “awfully high” compared with other directors.

Both he and McElroy said they planned to do more research on how the salaries are determined.

“It looked to me like there needs to be some kind of guidelines there,” McElroy said.

In a phone interview after the meeting, Burl Simmons, chairman of the ARcare board of directors, said the board looks at the salaries of top officials at hospitals and other health-care organizations in setting Collier’s salary.

Collier added that he and Ward-Jones are the only health-center directors in the state with medical degrees.

He said his salary is comparable with that of an administrator at a hospital of a similar size to ARcare, which operates more than two dozen clinics serving Cleburne, Craighead, Cross, Faulkner, Independence, Jackson, Lonoke, Monroe, Prairie, White and Woodruff counties, as well as two clinics in western Kentucky.

ARcare also operates a program for patients with HIV/AIDS, and it opened a preschool in Augusta last year, Collier said.

According to the legislative audit report, the group took in $28 million last year, including $9.2 million in federal grants, $1.3 million in state grants and $11.7 million in reimbursement for patient services.

“As far as compensation, I have classmates that make a lot more than I do,” Collier said.

The legislative committees began researching the health centers after the centers raised objections in July about the state’s plan to expand Medicaid by buying coverage in private insurance plans for adults with incomes of up to 138 percent of the poverty level.

The health centers receive an enhanced reimbursement rate from Medicaid and argued that they would be hurt financially if they had to accept lower reimbursement rates from private insurance companies.

In August, the Arkansas Department of Human Services announced that it would supplement the payments from private insurance companies to the health centers while it worked on a new payment system.

The health centers operate in areas that lack other providers or have a high percentage of people who lack insurance or have health problems. Patients pay fees that vary according to income.

Collier said he started work at ARcare, formerly known as the White River Rural Health Center, in 1981. Since he became chief executive in 2002, the number of clinics the organization operates has more than doubled. Any profit the organization makes is invested into opening new clinics, he said.

“We want to accommodate the people, and that’s my life’s mission,” Collier said.

The East Arkansas Family Health Center operates six clinics in Crittenden, Mississippi, Phillips and Poinsett counties.

Ward-Jones told lawmakers she sees patients two days a week, generating revenue that goes to the center.

Robert Beard, the center’s chief financial officer, noted that Ward-Jones has a degree in internal medicine, and that her salary is “still a bit below” the average of what other doctors in the area make.

Rep. Deborah Ferguson, D-West Memphis, said the salary is justified. Ward-Jones, she said, works long hours and views serving indigent patients as a “mission and not just a job.”

“She’s had opportunities to leave and make more money, and we’re so grateful she’s stayed,” Ferguson said.