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Dr. Bob Kerr

MOUNTAIN HOME — Dr. Bob Kerr didn't stay away from Mountain Home for long.

After graduating from UAMS, the Dermott native went looking for a place to set up shop.

He chose Mountain Home. Thirty-seven years later, he left to retire in Little Rock, but as he put it, "I flunked retirement." He then headed back to Mountain Home to be CEO at Baxter Regional Medical Center, a position he has held for nearly a year and a job he doesn't see leaving anytime soon.

"We have all these plans and looking toward the future. A long-range plan, the first phase of which was just passed … is a restructuring of our emergency room. It will basically double (in size) …, and that's what people thought our most pressing need was and now we are working on our second need, which is increasing the amount of operating room space and outpatient surgical suites. We're working on the plans for that. As shorter stays in the hospital become more common we are going to be seeing more outpatients, and that is going to be the big challenge, not just for us, but every hospital."

Kerr is well-versed in the challenges the hospital might face. During his tenure as a practicing physician, he held nearly every job a doctor could have in the hospital, and now as CEO, that background helps when dealing with the staff.

"Our doctors are really tickled to know that I understand their part of the equation," he said, "maybe better than a non-physician. They also have known me for a long time; perhaps that's a good thing. The staff of the hospital all seem to be pleased with the situation."

Mountain Home's population is nearly 12,000 now, but it wasn't when Kerr came to town.

"(The population) was 3,200, and I was the seventh doctor in town (which had) a 39-bed hospital," he said. "When I left in October of '04, there were 100 doctors and 268 beds, so it was a pretty good ride. Just a great professional ride."

Kerr was ready to retire, but discovered that he was not ready to leave Mountain Home.

"I wanted to be near my grandkids," he said, about moving to Little Rock. "I … didn't last very long not working, so I called BlueCross and they let me work three or four days a week. In February, (the hospital) asked me to do this and I've been here since then."

Kerr still maintains a home in Little Rock and gets there most weekends. Just not every weekend though; he has to squeeze in some duck hunting when he can and a little golf as well. Kerr has also followed Arkansas's improbable success in football this year.

Kerr's two sons live in Florida. William, a physician, lives in Jacksonville and serves as medical director for BlueCross BlueShield of Florida.

Meanwhile, running a hospital isn't easy. In addition to supervising construction plans, Kerr and the rest of the staff keep an eye on recruitment.

"We grow our own nurses," he said. "We have a good little community college that takes care of that for us, but recruiting physicians is something different."

While Mountain Home might be located in one of the most beautiful parts of Arkansas, it isn't really close to significantly populated areas.

"We are roughly three hours to Little Rock, two-and-a-half to Jonesboro, Springfield [Missouri] and Fayetteville," he said. "We host a dinner every year for the residents in Little Rock, and we talk to them about coming up here."

Kerr said the emphasis on physician recruitment started early.

"We doctors got together and we put together a little pool to help them come up," he said. "We are also looking at what we call succession planning, keeping track of our doctors' ages and making sure that we aren't caught by surprise when they get ready to retire. It is something that we work at."

While staff recruitment is one challenge, it is far from the only one.

"Margin on running a hospital, the money-making part, is very thin," Kerr said. "It can run anywhere from 0 to 3 percent margin and if you can run 3, you'd be tickled to death. What you have is increased costs, and those decreased reimbursements, are really hurting. More and more things are being done as outpatient, but outpatient reimbursement isn't keeping up with costs."

Some of those costs relate to the staff of 1,300, since Baxter Regional is one of the largest employers in north central Arkansas.

But thankfully, not all of the help costs money. "We have over 500 volunteers," Kerr said. "We are the largest volunteer hospital organization in the state. We have three more than Baptist (Baptist Health Medical Center, the state's largest hospital) does."

What the volunteers have contributed is staggering. "They gave us 85,000 hours," Kerr said. "That is an amazing amount of help."

And those volunteers help defray the costs of running a nonprofit institution. In regard to BRMC's not-for-profit status, Kerr said, "It requires us to provide services that aren't always profitable, but are needed. Our hospital is very aware of that and we do things that are good for the patients and for the community. Being a nonprofit, anything we make over expenses goes back into the hospital anyway."



January 2007

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