Ground broken on $2M health clinic in McGehee

McGEHEE -- A car dealer, a pharmacist and their team of fundraisers since March have collected more than $4 million to build a new medical clinic in this southeast Arkansas town as the community tries to solve a doctor shortage that has dogged it for decades.

The $2.2 million clinic, as well as cash stipends paid to medical students who commit to practicing here, will anchor efforts to recruit and retain physicians to the town of 4,200, located about 60 miles southeast of Pine Bluff, the project's backers said during a groundbreaking ceremony Monday morning.

The six-office clinic should be finished by summer 2017, about three years before new osteopathic medicine colleges in Jonesboro and Fort Smith start producing doctoral graduates, McGehee Hospital Chief Executive Officer John Heard said. Two medical students are already receiving the stipends, a value of $90,000 per student, because of their pledge to practice in McGehee for at least five years.

Rural communities are feeling the pinch of a nationwide doctor shortage even as the state pays more than $300,000 each year to entice medical students and residents to move into underserved areas, said Tammy Henson, administrator of rural programs at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.

Richard Wheeler, executive associate dean for the UAMS' College of Medicine, said many young doctors prefer to become an employee rather than start a new practice, which can come with administrative hassles and more expense, making McGehee's clinic a smart investment.

"That's probably one of the best things you can do" to recruit doctors, Wheeler said of the clinic.

Three family-practice doctors and one nurse practitioner, some nearing retirement and all employed by the nonprofit McGehee hospital, currently work in McGehee, Heard said. Residents can see visiting cardiologists or wound clinicians once a week, but they must go to Pine Bluff or Little Rock for most specialty care.

The new clinic will consist of offices, exam rooms, lab space and a $200,000 X-ray machine paid for by the Delta Regional Authority, a federal government agency focused on 252 counties and parishes in the eight-state Delta region.

Chris Masingill, the authority's federal co-chairman, lauded the community campaign to raise more than $4 million to pay for the clinic as an example of how rural American communities can overcome obstacles. Masingill said the clinic would allow McGehee to "recruit new opportunities" and said health care is a "pillar" of economic development.

"This symbolizes progress," Masingill said. "It tells people all over the region, 'We're moving forward.'"

An estimated 2,000 people contributed to a total of $1.75 million to the campaign. Contributions from the Wallace Trust Foundation and the McGehee Industrial Foundation bring the total raised to more than $4 million, said Bob Lucky, who chaired the fundraising committee.

"When we started, I wasn't a believer 100 percent" in that the funds could be raised, said Lucky, who owns Lucky Chevrolet.

Lucky and the hospital's pharmacy director, Ronnie Norris, said the idea hatched during a car sale, when Norris explained that the community would struggle to recruit new doctors when the current physicians retire.

It's not a new problem -- Gibbs Ferguson, who administers the Wallace Trust, said he joined a recruitment committee in the 1970s -- but the shortage is compounded when one of the practicing doctors takes ill or otherwise can't see patients for an extended period, Lucky said.

The stipend program as of now pays students $2,500 per month for three years, or $90,000, in exchange for a commitment to practice for at least five years in McGehee, Heard said. The money students receive can be spent however they wish.

The McGehee Industrial Foundation, the Wallace Trust Foundation and the McGehee hospital pay for the incentives, which the hospital administers, Heard said.

McGehee's existing clinic has been certified by the National Health Service Corps, meaning doctors who practice there for at least two to three years can have between $50,000 and $120,000 of their student loans paid down.

UAMS, through two state-funded rural practice programs, awards $327,000 to about 13 students or residents each year who commit to practice in a qualifying community, said Tammy Henson, administrator of the medical school's rural programs.

Of the roughly 250 participants in the medical school's rural programs since 1995, 70 percent have stayed in the rural community beyond their minimum four-year commitment, Henson said.

Generally speaking, the doctor shortage is blamed on too few residency opportunities for medical-school graduates, Wheeler said, noting that UAMS has increased its freshman enrollment from 150 to 174.

"Unless they can get a residency, they can't do anything," Wheeler said.

Heard, who said it has been more than 25 years since McGehee or neighboring communities successfully recruited a UAMS graduate who stayed longer than a year, said he hoped the new osteopathic medicine programs in Jonesboro and Fort Smith would yield future McGehee doctors.

What makes the clinic special, Lucky and Norris said, is that a small community identified a problem and raised its own money to try to solve it.

"We're not asking," Lucky said. "We're just doing our thing."

State Desk on 11/29/2016

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