Like many healthcare organizations in Arkansas, attracting and retaining quality personnel is an operational priority and ongoing challenge for Batesville-based White River Health and its subsidiary Stone County Medical Center in Mountain View. Fortunately, said David Fox, vice president of operations at White River Health and administrator at Stone County Medical Center, once he gets a prospective employee to Mountain View for an interview, the town and surrounding area practically sell themselves.
“I’ll tell you, it is gorgeous here,” Fox said. “We’re in the Ozarks. We have the beautiful Sylamore Creek, the White River, Blanchard Springs Caverns right here. We have so many activities, festivals and music events up here in Mountain View. It is just fantastic.
“It’s a real family environment with a lot of very friendly folks who will speak to you daily on the street. It’s just a very friendly community. That’s an appeal for physicians that are coming from environments where they don’t have rivers and lakes and hiking and biking trails. The community is easy to sell, and the healthcare system is easy to sell.”
Fox should know, having been recruited there to his current position in January. The Jacksonville native and alum of the University of Central Arkansas in Conway, who has spent more than three decades in healthcare, said White River Health offers something unique among Arkansas health care systems.
“From my perspective, I’m a values-driven-type leader,” he said. “When I listened and learned more about their values and why they do what they do and how they serve their mission to provide quality healthcare, it aligned with my personal values of compassion and accountability and respect, excellence and safety. Those things were paramount for me.
“I had also had the opportunity in the past to work together with [CEO] Steven Webb, and I felt very comfortable following his leadership. I saw this as a great opportunity for me to help support him in driving his own mission and agenda for improving the quality of healthcare for the communities we serve.”
These are challenging times for small community hospitals in Arkansas and nationwide, but Fox said White River Health holds one particular advantage over other health systems. He said the organization’s nimbleness allows it to be more responsive to community needs, something generally more difficult for larger health systems to achieve.
“The most important attribute is that we are independent,” he said. “That allows us to make decisions fairly quickly, to be able to implement strategic initiatives and changes, to be very tactical or purposeful in what we provide in our market. That comes from being locally governed by a board of businesspeople who genuinely care about the healthcare of the communities of which they serve.
“For White River Health in Batesville and Stone County Medical Center in Mountain View, that’s an absolute strength because we don’t get mired in a great deal of red tape. We can make decisions quickly and act on those decisions, be it strategic initiatives or beginning a new service line.”
Fox said another competitive advantage his organization has is an open mindedness of leadership to consider innovation. He said despite being the new administrator in town, he has received nothing but support for making changes where necessary from the community.
“I’ll be very honest, there have not been any sacred cows,” he said. “No one has pulled me aside and said, ‘Hey, listen, we’re glad you’re here. We’re glad you’re bringing this knowledge and experience, but we like things how they are. Don’t change X, Y, Z.’ We have a much more collaborative relationship with the mayor, the county judge, the chamber of commerce, and different boards and committees to improve quality of life and embrace new opportunities to drive economic development.”
Photo provided by White River Health
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