Freeman Health System finalized the acquisition of Northwest Health Medical Centers across the region, including Bentonville, Springdale and Siloam Springs. This acquisition is their first expansion into Arkansas, adding to its facilities already located in Missouri, Oklahoma and Kansas. Matt Fry is the president and CEO of Freeman Health System. He says it felt fitting to add Arkansas to their list.
Matt Fry: We're excited to be there. We're excited to be a part of the community and fully integrated into the community of Northwest Arkansas. And frankly, we're really excited to see what we're able to collectively achieve over the coming years as we deliver access to high quality health care to the four states area.
Matthew Moore: For people who are familiar with the hospitals and hospital systems that you guys acquired — we're thinking of a hospital in Bentonville, we're thinking of Willow Creek, which is near Fayetteville. I think it's technically in Johnson. We're looking at a facility in Siloam Springs, too. So you really are taking part in a fully regional capacity here.
Fry: Absolutely. We have, as you mentioned, a hospital in Johnson, a hospital in Bentonville, a hospital in Siloam Springs, as well as a hospital in Springdale, and then a whole host of outpatient and ambulatory sites of service throughout the market.
Moore: Some of the news that we've seen here recently in Northwest Arkansas, and then even stretching further south into the River Valley area, is we've seen some hospitals who were doing a little bit of downsizing. We've seen at Washington Regional. There's been a little bit of that in Fort Smith. We've seen a hospital there who is moving away from labor and delivery. We're seeing other retractions in this sort of industry here. What does it mean for you to see that happening while you are simultaneously growing the work that you and your colleagues are doing here regionally?
Fry: Well, the reality is health care is extraordinarily complex and it's a very difficult industry to have sustainable operations in. The leadership of Baptist Health, as well as the leadership of Washington Regional and Mercy for that matter — they're exceptional leaders and they are all trying to do the best things they can for their communities and for their health systems. And unfortunately, this job requires us to make very difficult decisions at times. That being said, Freeman Health System is positioned very well for not only sustaining what we have already, but growing in very meaningful ways. Not only are we growing into Northwest Arkansas, but we're also growing into southeast Kansas and we're enhancing our services in southwest Missouri. So it's a time of excitement. It's a time of opportunity for us, and we're really excited to lean into this with intentionality. The challenges that we face in healthcare — it's not like Freeman is immune to those, but over the course of the last several years, we've really positioned ourselves well to deal with the uncertainty that the industry is facing right now. And so it positions us perhaps a little different than other organizations that are not only in our region, but across the country.
Moore: For many listeners, access to healthcare and access to these sorts of services is really limited to what you were able to get to in your specific location. And for some of us, we do have a bit of choice. You know, I could go to Washington Regional, I could go to Mercy, I could go to what will now be your hospital in Bentonville. When you think about that dynamic — for some people, it is their only option and for others they have choice — how does that change the dynamic of the work that you do in a region?
Fry: Well, at every step of the way, we want to provide high quality, exceptional health care to the patients that we serve. We want it to be a good experience. We want it to be a safe environment, not only for our colleagues and our physicians, but for the patients. And we need to earn business. I think sometimes we feel like healthcare is one of those services that people reluctantly seek out only when they need it. But really, we want to take a mindset at Freeman Health System — and we have done this very successfully over the years — that we're here to earn business, and we want to be exceptional in everything that we do because our patients deserve that.
Moore: When we think about the people who will continue working at the same facility, the same hospital that they were working at a month ago, what is the changeover look like for them? How will their work look the same? How will it look different?
Fry: In July, we're going to begin strategic planning for Northwest Arkansas. In particular, we completed a very comprehensive strategic planning session in our Missouri and Kansas market, and we rolled that out in November. And if anyone is interested in looking at that public facing strategic plan, you can find it on our Freeman Health System home page. That strategic plan is really centered around five points of purpose. Excellence in care, where it's focused — we have an entire work plan focused on quality, patient outcomes, patient experience, patient safety. The second point of purpose is people first, where we're really intently focused on how do we take care of the most valuable asset that we have at Freeman Health System, and that's our people. So that's looking at strategies monetarily as well as non-monetary to ensure that we're enriching and growing and respecting and valuing the people that work for this incredible organization.
The third one is strategic growth. You're seeing some of that with our recent acquisition in Northwest Arkansas, but there are a number of other strategic partnerships, strategic acquisitions, and other things that are in various stages of discovery right now that are part of that comprehensive plan. The fourth one is community engagement, and that's really time, treasure and talent. It's leaning into the community to hopefully make a difference. It's showing up and being present and being fully engaged. It extends beyond just writing checks. It also includes donating our time, donating our expertise. And then finally there is operational integrity. It's really focusing on being good stewards of the resources that have been bestowed upon us. We want to do things where we can eliminate waste where possible, or we can increase efficiency, we can increase efficacy. We want to do the right things for the right reasons, but we need to be very smart with how we utilize the resources that we have. We want to be patient centric and we want to provide exceptional service. So that's really encompassed in operational integrity. So we will be bringing that same type of structure to Northwest Arkansas, but we'll be developing or composing new interdisciplinary teams that will focus on building out specific work plans for each of those points of purpose for Northwest Arkansas. That will help guide our work and our focus for the next five years in that market.
Moore: In the press release, we list out some of the long term goals for this expansion. One of them includes increasing access to maternal care. This is something that we here at KUAF have been reporting a lot on here in Arkansas, as Arkansas ranks near the bottom, if not at the bottom, when it comes to maternal morbidity and infant morbidity here in the States. As you look at the sort of work that you are doing in other states who are being more successful at maternal care and maternal care access, what are ways that you could see implementing those strategies and those successes in other places where Freeman Health exists to help to improve maternal health here in the state of Arkansas?
Fry: I'm really glad that you mentioned that, Matthew, because this is going to be one of our critical success factors as we go into the strategic planning that I just mentioned. We will be looking very intently at maternal health, and we will be putting together some fairly robust strategies around how to move the needle on this. This will be of great importance to us. I don't have all the answers. I wish I could give you an outline right now of exactly what we'll do, but we'll be pulling together some fairly robust, interdisciplinary teams that will help us to identify the path forward. We've already been looking at increasing maternal fetal medicine physician support in Willow Creek, for example, and really to support the entire market. We've been looking at enhancing our neonatal intensive care unit and increasing the acuity of patients that we're able to serve there. Those are a couple examples, but we're going to continue to really dig into this and ensure that we have a robust strategy around it.
Moore: And Willow Creek seems like the perfect place for this to be an incubator of places where you can really push the envelope on ways to improve this pretty drastically, considering it's a place where this is almost essentially all that they really focus on.
Fry: The CEO of that hospital, Jessica Rivera, she is a nurse by background. She has a very strong passion for maternal care and ensuring that we're able to do the things that allow for us to improve our standing. When you look at national rankings as it relates to maternal and fetal morbidity, we want to enhance our services in such a way that we're providing value, we're increasing access, and we're closing gaps. And that's exactly the type of strategic planning that Jessica has already begun.
Matt Fry is the president and CEO of Freeman Health System. We spoke earlier this month.
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