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HEBER SPRINGS — The view rivals any in Arkansas.
Baptist Health-Heber Springs is perched on top of a hill, with one side facing Sugar Loaf Mountain and the other side looking off into the valley.
In terms of views, Baptist Health-Heber Springs’ only possible rival is Mercy-Turner Memorial; the Ozark hospital sits atop a river bluff and looks down on the Arkansas River.

But the completed product in Heber Springs is a far cry from where it started, a cow pasture.

“We were so fortunate to find this site,” said Russ Harrington, CEO of Baptist Health. “A local farmer had cattle, and I came up here for the first time and cows were all around. So I was trying to envision it and then we saw Sugar Loaf, and we decided that it had to overlook Sugar Loaf.”

Of course, the reminders of what the site used to be still graze nearby.
“You can still get a feel for that, just look straight up there,” said Ed Lacy, the administrator of Baptist Health-Heber Springs, as he pointed to an adjacent cow pasture. But when he first looked at the site, could he see a new hospital?
“Actually, I could,” Lacy said. “This is the vision that we had and the goal, but I really think that our facility has surpassed that.”

The reason for the new, 64,000-square-foot facility was obvious to Harrington.
“We were just overcrowded,” he said. “We looked first at just expanding, but the way the old facility was constructed, you just couldn’t expand. We couldn’t continue to serve more people with the facilities that we have … we would have to find a different location.”

He added, “We just stepped out on faith and decided that we would do it since this community deserves it.”

The original Cleburne County Hospital opened in 1968, and Baptist Health assumed operation in 1996 when the hospital became the fifth in the Baptist Health system.

“If you have been to some of our other campuses, you know that we like to be on the tops of hills. … You can tell it is a Baptist Health facility,” Harrington said of Heber Springs. But, for now, this might be the last new construction for some time.

“We’ve done five,” Harrington said. “So we will have to go with what we’ve got. We will have to find better ways to serve the community. That’s what we are all about, service to the local communities.”

Nearly $22 million later, a brand-new 25-bed acute care facility is open in Heber Springs. The building is constructed on 15 acres, and another 29 acres are nearby for additional construction in the future, possibly medical office space in an adjoining tower. A total of 276 rooms, including hospital rooms and office space, are currently available, and the new building has an expanded emergency department, a larger operating suite and a centralized outpatient clinic. In-house MRI services will now also be available, along with a larger cafeteria for employees and visitors.

The old facility will go back to Cleburne County, and its future is still up in the air. It will most likely become office space for services offered by the county.

CDI Contractors built the new facility, and the Wilcox Group did the architecture work with donations playing a key part in the construction.
“The Cleburne Health Foundation was instrumental in our fundraising efforts,” Lacy said. “Everyone, fom members of the community to our own employees, has given above and beyond all our goals.”

Patients were moved from the old hospital, on the other side of Heber Springs, to the new hospital at the end of June.

The hospital is also a major employer in the area.

“We have about 150 FTEs or full-time equivalencies,” Lacy said. “So that roughly translates to about 210 people on the payroll. So we are in the top 10, but probably, salary-wise, we are closer to the top.”



August 2007

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