As the new president and CEO of Conway Regional Health System, Angie Longing said her goal is to champion the health system’s status as a regional leader in central Arkansas while keeping patients at the center of everything Conway Regional does.
Beginning her career as a labor and delivery nurse at CHI St. Vincent Morrilton more than 30 years ago, Longing soon advanced to become chief nursing officer at that hospital and two additional facilities. She went on to serve as executive director of nursing at CHI St. Vincent Infirmary in Little Rock before spending a year covering the Arkansas market at CommonSpirit Health’s Physician Enterprise.
From 2016 to 2022, she served as chief nursing officer at Conway Regional through an affiliation agreement with CHI St. Vincent. During that time, she helped the health system gain Magnet recognition from the American Nurses Credentialing Center despite challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic.
She was then promoted to market chief nurse executive for the Arkansas market at CHI St. Vincent and continued to advance her career, serving as president of the Morrilton hospital and interim president at CHI St. Vincent Infirmary while still market chief nurse for the four-hospital system.
Following the departure of Matt Troup, who had led Conway Regional for more than a decade, the health system announced Longing as the president and CEO in July. Arkansas Money & Politics caught up with Longing to discuss her plans for the role.
Arkansas Money & Politics: How does it feel to be the new president and CEO at Conway Regional Health System?
Angie Longing: It has been so humbling. It’s an honor to be named the president and CEO. I have been a nurse for over 32 years and have been in healthcare for that amount of time. To get that call to talk about becoming the president and CEO of Conway Regional has just been a very exciting and, like I said, humbling experience for me.
AMP: What were some of your big wins while you were serving as chief nursing officer at Conway Regional?
Longing: We went through the COVID-19 pandemic. That alone really talks about your team, about the character of the team and the resiliency that a team can have.
To accomplish anything during that time was a huge accomplishment because we had to shift and adjust in the way that we provided care to our patients, so for us to achieve the Magnet designation during that time, I would say, would be one of the top accomplishments in my career.
It’s about having excellence in your practice, even through those trials and a pandemic, so I would put that at the top and just learning how to adjust and shift how we provided care to those patients through the pandemic.
AMP: What takeaways from your leadership roles at CHI St. Vincent will you bring to this position?
Longing: For me, it’s about putting your patients at the center of all the decisions you make. It doesn’t matter what organization I’m working in; that’s always going to be my ultimate goal — to put those patients at the center of the decisions that I make.
There are always going to be opportunities, and so constantly thinking about that and how we can do that is really very important to me as a clinician and just as a community member. While I was at CHI, we had improvements in employee engagement, we had improvements in our patient experience. At every touchpoint, we asked, ‘What could we do to make a difference for our patients?’
Through that, St. Vincent was named as the top in quality for all of CommonSpirit — over 140 organizations — in 2025. That was quite the accomplishment for us to do that, so I would bring very similar things to this role and to this organization in always putting patients at the center and quality care as the top priority.
AMP: What are your Day 1 priorities coming into this role?
Longing: Listen, listen, listen. Sit down with as many people as I can. I have a lot of physician meetings, meetings with our employees, our board members. It’s really, I guess, getting around and getting in front of people and talking to them about what’s going well, what are some of the things that might need to be my priorities as I move into this role.
People are really wanting to get in front of me, and that’s exciting for me. I want to listen to as many people as possible. Over my career, I would say building relationships is a key for me, and it’s not even about just getting to know someone, but it’s how we can work together and do things better.
AMP: What are your key strategies for continued growth at Conway Regional?
Longing: There’s a lot of great things in place at Conway Regional, and we want to continue to grow on those. We want to strengthen our partnerships throughout the communities. We have a lot of other facilities and other organizations that we partner with today, and we want to strengthen that.
We want to grow our access throughout the central Arkansas area, be the regional leader in healthcare. That’s certainly going to be one of my key strategies, to become that by providing care locally and not necessarily having to go down the road for it. How can we grow any of our service lines, whether it be specialty service lines or primary care? How can we utilize that and have the things here locally for our communities that they need?
AMP: What are some areas of need you have identified, and how do you plan to address them?
Longing: Like I said, enhance and strengthen relationships, looking at what the needs are of the community, whether it be behavioral health and how we can strengthen that or growing our graduate medical education to add a pipeline of physicians into the organization and grow doctors for our communities.
We want to be a good partner, and we want to keep people well, but what can we do when people need us when they’re sick? Of course, that’s what a hospital is, right? We’re here for you when you need us, but how can we keep them well and keep them out of this? What preventative screenings and things can we offer? We have a mobile unit that we’d like to utilize a little bit more. How can we utilize that a little bit more in our community for wellness?
AMP: Healthcare across the country is experiencing a shortage of labor. What is your philosophy when it comes to recruiting and retaining talent?
Longing: If you treat your employees well, then that certainly helps. Ultimately, that’s the key to it is we’re taking care of people, so we need to take care of our people. We’ve been a best place to work for the last 10 years. When I was here as chief nursing officer, we achieved it for the first time, and it’s continued on, so I think that that alone is very significant for this organization.
I mentioned the graduate medical education program. That’s our pipeline of physicians, so continuing to grow that, I think that is vital for our future. There are physician shortages, nursing shortages, other specialty shortages, so having that program is very significant for us. Partnering with other educational programs is also important.
Like I said, taking care of our people and making it a place where you want to work is very important and vital to our future. We try to develop our leaders, and we have things for our employees, whether it’s tuition reimbursement or scholarships. There are so many things that we have done for the employees, and we’ll continue to grow and do those things. It helps with those shortages and makes it where you want to work here.
AMP: What other trends are you watching in the medical community, and what impact do you expect them to have on Conway Regional?
Longing: Certainly, the challenges across healthcare and the role of the bedside physician and caregivers, but probably the growing technology and [artificial intelligence] and the digital tools for improving care are things that we really need to keep our eyes on. There’s so much there that can be done.
You have to work with value-based care and improving quality while managing the cost; there’s the aging population and the increasing prevalence of chronic disease. When we talk about needing to provide care and wellness in your community, all of these things are certainly trends and concerns that we need to keep our eyes on.
We do a community-based needs assessment, and so from that, we plan for how we’re going to do these things over the next few years, but these are some of the things that we’re keeping our eyes on.
AMP: What are your long-term goals for the future of the health system?
Longing: Being the regional leader in healthcare is really the position we want Conway Regional to be in, so we’ll continue our access and strategic growth throughout the central Arkansas area. It’s vital to provide the excellent-quality patient care in order for us to continue to have that growth. Maintaining our financial stability and growing our technology — all of these things really contribute for us to be able to sustain things from a long-term standpoint.
AMP: What do you hope to get out of this role personally and professionally?
Longing: Can we ultimately improve the wellness of central Arkansas? It’s not change that happens overnight, but can we help with chronic disease? Can we do those things? Can we be that access point?
Those things are all very important to me. I’m a part of this community, and so how do we come together and help educate people and provide that access and help drive the changes?
AMP: What else would you like our readers to know about you?
Longing: I’m born and raised in Arkansas, and so that’s important to me because it’s personal to me. At every touchpoint, I’m dealing with someone in the community that I might know. I’m dealing with my family. I think it’s important that I’m born and raised here, and the things that we do ultimately make a difference because I’m personally invested in it.
