Tim Hill

Finding North Arkansas Regional Medical Center in Harrison is easy — just follow the giant construction cranes that tower over the town of 12,152 people.

"I didn't even think of that," said former COO Chris Whybrew, who has since left the hospital for a similar position at an Arizona hospital. "I come to work another way and it didn't occur to me to say 'look for the construction.'"

The groundbreaking for the expansion and renovation was in June 2005 and the tentative completion date for the $25 million, 145,000-square-foot facility is next spring.

Nabholz Construction of Conway is the builder and Little Rock's Wilcox Group designed the expansion.

"It will give us 73 new beds, all private," said hospital CEO Tim Hill. "That's what just about everybody is going to, private beds."

The trend to private beds isn't just a good idea. "Now it is required for any new construction, but it is just a better service," Whybrew noted.

"And the patients like it," Hill added. "It is better for them and better for their families."

The project will also add, among other things, a women's health center.

The idea for the expansion is almost a decade old.

"Shortly after I got here in 1998, we started taking a look at what we needed to do," Hill said. "The core of the hospital is 56, 57 years old, so it was time."

But the construction didn't happen at first.

"In the first attempt, we tried to get it done, but we couldn't get the financial support," Hill said. "So it was then put on hold, but we got some bonds to pass and people rallied to it. It was a community-wide effort."

The hospital is a not-for-profit public corporation and, unlike some hospitals in Arkansas, Harrison does not levy a sales tax to support the facility.



Service Area

While Harrison houses just a little over 12,000 people, the hospital serves a much larger area.

"It is closer to 100,000 people," Hill said. "When we take a look at where we go and where our patients come from, it is a much larger area. We get some patients from Missouri, and we draw from the rural population around here as well. For them, we are the hospital."

Harrison is still fairly isolated. Branson, Mo., (about a 30-minute drive from Harrison) has the next closest hospital to Harrison with the 177-bed Skaggs Community Health Center.

"They have got so much up there now," Hill said of Branson. "When people here are looking to go somewhere for a day or to go eat, that's where people are headed. And then Springfield is just down the road from there. It is still a little quicker to get to Fayetteville, but when the road gets done [a four-lane highway is under construction] it will be faster to get to Springfield. Of course, as long as the Hogs are in Fayetteville, people will still be going there."



Radiation Therapy

One of Harrison's draws is the Claude Parrish Radiation Therapy Institute.

"We got going in 1990," said Jon Burnside, the director of radiation oncology. "We had a big groundbreaking ceremony and [Bill] Clinton [then governor] came. It was a big deal for here."

The center is named after Claude Parrish, a businessman from Harrison, who donated the money to get it going.

The facility, called by the name of PARTI locally, is not affiliated with any of the other radiation therapy centers around Arkansas, but the alphabet soup of PARTI, CARTI and NARTI can be confusing.

"That's just the way it worked out," Burnside said. "You don't get much variation when three of the letters are the same."

And while the letters are similar, the treatments offered are also similar.

"We're just like everybody else," Burnside said. "We treat the big three of breast, lung and prostate."

Those three cancers make up 66 percent of the patient base. The only other cancer in double figures is colon at 11 percent.


February 2007