Special Section: Health Care
Delta health care industry:
Moving forward with the future
New services and expansion of existing services help area providers

By Robert McFarland, Jr.
DBJ Contributing Writer

The watchword of the Delta health care industry for 2005 continues to be expansion--expansion of medical specialties, advanced equipment and services in an effort to stop out-migration of patients to larger medical centers in Jackson, Memphis and around the country. From locally held facilities such as Delta Regional Medical Center in Greenville and Greenwood Leflore Hospital to investor owned facilities, such as Northwest MS Regional Medical Center in Clarksdale, The King’s Daughters Hospital in Greenville and Bolivar Medical Center in Cleveland, the aggressive growth and development begun in 2004 doesn’t seem to be slowing down in the coming months. This spells good news for Delta health care consumers who would rather keep their dollars at home, if the services and specialists can deliver care equal to or better than what they once traveled out of the region to receive.

At The King’s Daughters, Kim Dowdy, who serves as director of marketing and community relations, said the 101-bed hospital is undergoing some renovation. The admissions and lab departments are being moved to the front of the building. Dowdy explained it makes sense to have pre-registration lab services convenient to new patients.

Those projects follow construction of a new emergency room in 2001, the recent completion of the hospital’s new front entrance and restoration of the lobby to how it looked when King’s Daughters was built in 1926.

Founded in 1894, The King’s Daughters Hospital was purchased in 1999 by Community Health Systems; Dowdy said the Brentwood, Tenn., company operates 75 hospitals throughout much of the U.S.

During the past year, King’s Daughters also renovated a 1930s-era building next door and dubbed it the Teller Medical Complex. The Women’s Clinic was opened early in 2004: “We had 95 births in 2003,” Dowdy said, “and we expect 250 in 2004.

“In 2005, we will continue development and retention of our medical staff and focus on our emergency room.”

Delta Regional Medical Center, also in Greenville, is a 268-bed full-service medical/surgical hospital. A community-owned facility, it is the largest medical referral center in the tri-state Delta region (of Arkansas, Mississippi and Louisiana). The hospital’s primary service area is Washington County, Mississippi; however it also serves an expanded secondary service area, which includes parts of Sharkey, Holmes, Bolivar, Leflore, Humphreys and Sunflower Counties in Mississippi, Chicot County, Arkansas and the northeast corner of Louisiana.

According to Delta Regional Medical Center’s Chief Executive Officer, L. Ray Humphreys, the hospital’s staff, administration and board of trustees have a vision to create a state-of-the-art health care system that reaches out into the communities to serve the region’s population, with superior health care services and technology.

“Historically, the Delta region of Mississippi, Arkansas, and Louisiana, has been considered one of the most economically depressed areas in the county,” says Humphreys. “Unfortunately, that has also meant that a greater number of people in this region have not had access to quality health care. We are committed to changing the state of health and of health care for the people we serve, by bringing new medical specialties, as well as advanced equipment and services to the Delta, and making them accessible to the people who need them so desperately,” notes Humphreys.

The past year was a successful one for Delta Regional Medical Center in terms of recruitment of new specialists. Ten new specialists have joined the active medical staff at Delta Regional since summer of 2004. They include: Satwinder Singh, M.D., Infectious Disease Specialist; Norrapol Wattanasuwan, M.D., Cardiologist; Karen L. Verell, M.D., Pediatrician; Lenard J. Rutkowski, M.D., Neurosurgeon; Eric R. Mueller, M.D., Psychiatrist; Allen R. Yates, M.D., Radiologist; Richard C. Smith, M.D., Radiologist; Clide Sherrod, M.D., Emergency Medicine Specialist; Frank Daly, M.D., Urologist; and Steven F. Chapman, M.D., Cardiovascular Surgeon. A new cardiovascular surgeon, Steven F. Chapman, M.D., is joining the staff in early February. Delta Regional has the only heart and vascular program in the Delta to have a full-time heart surgeon on its staff. In the coming months an Anesthesiologist and a Neurologist also are slated to come on board.

In 2004, Delta Regional also opened the Solutions Geriatric Care Center, a 16-bed inpatient unit, which provides psychiatric care for senior adults, as well as introducing several new service lines provided by the medical center’s Outpatient Rehabilitation department, including non-surgical treatments for chronic back pain, urinary incontinence and lympthedema, and orthopedic joint camp.

During 2004, Northwest Regional Medical Center renovated 80 percent of its rooms, according to Doug Arnold, CEO of the facility. The 195-bed hospital is owned by HMA of Naples, Fla., which owns seven other Mississippi hospitals.

Among other improvements, Arnold cites the construction of a room to house the new $1.1 million General Electric LightSpeed CT scanner. That instrument should be operational later this month.

Built in 1952, the only procedures not offered at NRMC are open-heart surgery and neurosurgery. Arnold said a neurophysiology lab was opened at the hospital in 2004 and a neurophysiologist has been added to the staff.

It was a busy year, according to Arnold; the telemetry unit was expanded from 18 beds to 34. During 2005, the emergency room will be doubled from eight beds to 16.

“It’s like musical chairs,” Arnold said of the nomad-like moves of departments within the hospital.

With 25,000 emergency room patients per year, Arnold said a new, permanent ER facility will be constructed within the next 24 months.

And there are other changes in the air at NRMC, changes that don’t show up as brick-and-mortar projects: “We are instituting the Studer Health Care Principles,” Arnold explained. The code for health care workers provides a guide to dealing with patients, who are, after all, customers of the hospital.

Part of the Studer plan calls for employees to recall why they entered the medical field in the first place: “We’re looking for people who feel called,” Arnold remarked. “What was their motivation? We want them to reflect on that an remember it as they care for our patients.”
Bolivar Medical Center in Cleveland opened in 1962, then named East Bolivar County Hospital, a 104-bed general hospital, it was designed to serve the people of the eastern portion of the County. In 1971, when the Rosedale hospital closed its doors, East Bolivar County Hospital became Bolivar County Hospital. Since that time the hospital has grown to 165 beds. In April 2000, Bolivar Medical Center was leased to Province Healthcare, Inc., of Brentwood,

Bolivar Medical Center has followed the course of other Delta hospitals adding new equipment and specialists to expand the services it can provide its patients. In 2004 Bolivar Medical Center added state-of-the-art lithotripsy and laser treatments for kidney stones. The medical center has one of the only dual frequency Holmium lasers in the state. It is used to fragment kidney stones for passage or removal. The hospital has also added a second endoscopy room for colonoscopy and sigmoidoscopy procedures. Additionally, Bolivar Medical acquired a LORAD M-IV Platinum Mammography machine as well as new ultrasound equipment, which provides high quality studies with its specialized probes dedicated for the use in breast ultrasound.

Bolivar Medical Center is now slated for a transfer of ownership from Province Healthcare, Inc. to LifePoint Hospitals, Inc. Ruth McDaniel, CEO of Bolivar Medical Center, said she “expects a seamless transfer” when the Cleveland facility is purchased by LifePoint Hospitals Inc. in the next couple months. She said commentary on the hospital’s future plans would have to wait until the new owner takes over.

According to LifePoint’s web site, the Tennessee-based firm operates 27 hospitals in nine states. The company’s focus is on acquiring hospitals in smaller communities where that hospital is the sole provider of health care services. DBJ