A lot has changed in Conway the past two years — the city now has two hospitals.
In July 2014, then-Gov. Mike Beebe wielded a shovel to help break ground for Baptist Health Medical Center-Conway at
1555 Exchange Ave., just off Interstate 40. Last week, Gov. Asa Hutchinson cut the ribbon on the $150 million facility that opens Friday morning. Hutchinson said the medical center was nice, but he joked that the tent that covered the podium and chairs for the audience on the hot day was
“really important.” Attendees were given hand-held Baptist Health System paper fans, and many people used them as they listened to elected officials and hospital administrators praise the 260,000-square-foot medical center.
Hutchinson said the medical center represents “an extraordinary economic impact” in the state. He received applause when he said Baptist Health is the third largest private-sector employer in the state, behind Walmart and Tyson Foods Inc. He said the new medical center “is really reflective of the incredible growth in Conway.”
Conway Mayor Tab Townsell said hospital officials thanked him for being there. He made an exaggerated turn to look up at the massive building rising behind him and said, “Thank me?”
“This huge, modern, multi-multi-million dollar building on the interstate gives Conway priceless branding,” he said.
The medical center is a plus for Conway for a variety of reasons, he said, including allowing existing customers of Baptist Health an opportunity to stay in Conway.
“A diversity of options is a good thing in our community,” he said. The city also is home to 154-bed Conway Regional Medical Center, which is managed by CHI St. Vincent Health System.
Troy Wells, president and CEO of Baptist Health, said in an interview after the ceremony that discussions began in about 2012 among Baptist Health leaders about coming into Conway. He credited his predecessor, retired former CEO Russ Harrington, for having the vision.
“It’s a long process,” Wells said of opening a medical center, adding that leaders had to find out what the community needed, for one. The Conway facility is the ninth hospital in the Baptist Health System.
“This one is particularly challenging, interesting and special,” Wells said, because it was built from the ground up. “We started from nothing.”
The property originally was purchased by a group of doctors who planned to open a hospital in partnership with Cirrus Health of Texas. A groundbreaking on the property was held in October 2008, and a hospital was supposed to open in mid-2010.
However, federal legislation governing physician-owned hospitals changed, and the project never got off the ground. The physician group sold the land in 2015 to Baptist Health, according to a Baptist Health official. Baptist Health is an Arkansas-based, not-for-profit, faith-based health care organization.
It also was announced at that time that the group of Conway doctors was going to co-manage Baptist Health Medical Center-Conway.
Mark Lowman, spokesman for Baptist Health, said Monday that the co-management agreement is still in place, although it was expanded to include other groups.
“We decided to have multiple arrangements with a variety of specialty physicians — rather than one contract with one group — which include co-management functions within the hospital and, specifically, we’ve got physician-specialty co-management arrangements in place with cardiology and orthopedics, general surgery and primary care,” Lowman said. “They help to manage the hospital.”
Some Conway Regional Medical Center physicians will practice at both hospitals.
Dr. Parker Norris, an interventional cardiologist, is one of those. In brief remarks at the dedication, he said
Baptist Health Medical Center-Conway is filled with the best nurses, doctors and staff available. “I think patients can be confident they’re going to get best outcomes,” he said. “It’s going to improve access; it’s going to improve quality. I think you’ll see, as I have, it’s a pretty special place.”
In an interview afterward, he said “at some point it will fall out where one place [hospital] will be more advantageous,
and we’ll choose one over the other,” Norris said, referring to where doctors will practice. He said some patients want to use Conway Regional; others will want to use Baptist. “I think most of us are going to try to accommodate that,” Norris said.
When Wells was asked afterward if he thought Conway had enough patients for two medical centers — which Conway Regional Health System CEO Matt Troup has publicly said the data don’t support — Wells smiled and said, “We want to provide access to more people in this region.”
Joanie White-Wagoner, vice president and hospital administrator for the Baptist facility in Conway, said “endless research” was done on best practices for patients. “We hand-selected the very best care team we could,” she said. White-Wagoner said the hospital will open Friday with 325 health care professionals, eventually expanding to 500. A women’s center, which will offer labor-and-delivery services, is under construction and is scheduled to open in November on the site.
The medical center has 111 beds and eight operating rooms, but it will open at 7 a.m. Friday with 24 available beds with other units set to open on a staggered schedule, according to a press release. It is opening with six operating rooms, a helipad and a full-service emergency room staffed with specialized personnel, including paramedics.
Wells said some of the state-of-the-art technology will include smart beds that can weigh patients without moving them to a scale and data the bed monitors can automatically upload to an electronic-medical-records system.
Services the hospital will offer include surgery, imaging, urology, dialysis, wound care, mammography, gastroenterology, oncology, cardiology diagnostics, nephrology, and physical, speech and occupational rehab.
Attendees were invited to tour the facility after the ceremony.
Senior writer Tammy Keith an be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.