Family practitioner Steven Collier, MD, insists he’s not that busy.

Yet the CEO of ARcare, who is wrapping three sizable projects, working on two more closer to home, and also maintains a robust clinical practice, has responsibilities that would make most healthcare providers and administrators more than a bit faint.

The secret, he shared, is this: “We have a true team approach,” said Collier, who helped establish the organization with one clinic in 1986. ARcare, an affiliate of Baptist, now serves 30 communities from Bentonville to Paducah, Ky. “The greatest challenge is referencing being a doctor and a CEO, more specifically the amount of work that’s required to make progress. I’ve done that through organization and team mentality. I defer and delegate some very powerful issues to other physician leaders. Some may question that transfer of authority, but that leadership style allows us to continuously make progress.”

For example, Collier’s point person for human resources, West Allen, MD, handles all physician hiring and firing decisions. “A dismissed physician may appeal to me, but I fully back Dr. Allen’s call,” he said. “I have that relationship with our entire leadership group. They run their programs and I’m truly like a strategist for them.”

Collier’s leadership team includes physician leaders who have been affiliated with ARcare for many years, including Rita Albright, MD, JD; Danny Moore, MD, who handles special services; and Greg Wolverton, the chief information officer who has paved the way for full implementation of ARcare’s electronic medical records (EMR) system. “He’s done a fabulous job connecting us electronically,” said Collier, from his office desk. “I’m watching our Kentucky clinic right now on my screen.”

On a typical afternoon in mid-January, Collier was preparing to open a 6,300-square-foot leased facility in Conway. A physician had already been recruited, and the staff was in place. “We’re putting the final touches on it now,” he noted. At the same time, ARcare was opening a clinic in Bardwell, a rural community south of Paducah, Ky., the company’s first venture outside Arkansas. “KentuckyCare is up and running,” he added.

“We’ve been going to Kentucky for a long time, and a University of Kentucky study of five community health centers across the country spearheaded by Dr. Michael Samuels showed how effective our presence was. We started working with their Department of Family Practice and research department, studied the report and stayed in contact. We met a county judge, Greg Terry, through a leadership conference. He asked us to come up there with a permanent presence and we did.”

Simultaneously, ARcare opened a school-based clinic in Cherry Valley through the Cross County School District in Arkansas.

“As we’re coming to the conclusion of those three projects, we’re waiting on delivery of a mobile unit for medical services that we’re partnering with WalMart on, and is being custom built for us in California,” said Collier. “Then we’re also building a $3 million education center in Augusta, while continuing the regular practice of medicine, seeing several hundred patients a day.”

Every year, depending on the flu season impact, ARcare clinics report between 130,000 and 150,000 patient encounters, with the average patient being seen three times annually. Seven of 26 ARcare clinics are participating in a Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) pilot program for the Patient Centered Medical Home (PCMH) model. It’s a model that is working well, he noted.

Collier has made great strides in medicine since his first job on the housekeeping staff of Hillcrest Baptist Hospital in Waco, Texas, where his initial assignment included mopping ceilings.

“It was the summer of 1973, and I’d just enrolled at Baylor,” Collier recalled, with a chuckle. “I put on my college application that my major was political science, but I felt a tugging for medicine and determined the best way to decide was to work in a hospital. I eventually worked my way to scrub tech in the OR, and got to know the doctors and nurses. By the next summer, I changed my major to pre-med.”

A native of Augusta, where his family had roots tracing back to 1849 and possibly 1825, Collier was the first of four children born to Clyde Franklin, a politically active entrepreneur at the local and state level, and Mary Linda, a homemaker and avid tennis player. In 2005, after 52 years of marriage, both parents died within weeks of each other from failing health – he had Parkinson’s; she had a series of strokes that began early in life.

Collier met his wife, Susan, a registered nurse, on the Baylor campus. After earning a medical degree at UAMS, he completed an internship at Jefferson Hospital in Pine Bluff. They returned to Augusta to raise a family, three sons now grown – Winston, an attorney; Stuart, administrator of Reliance Healthcare’s flagship nursing home in Fayetteville that U.S. News & World Report named the best in Arkansas; and Alex, director of facilities for ARcare, managing 45 to 50 buildings for the group.

When Collier is off call, the extended family gathers for adventure travels, whether close to home or trekking through mountaintops in the West. In late spring, he dusts mothballs off the family boat for summertime fun. Most recently, the family, including grandchildren Presley, 7, Estelle, 5, and Avery, 3, headed to Dallas for four days to attend the Cotton Bowl, with side adventures of shopping (for Susan) and exploring the city by foot (for Collier and his sons).

“We take short trips as often as we can,” said Collier. “Alex and I went to Palm Springs, took the tram up the mountain and trekked all over. We did the same thing in Tucson. We enjoy adventure traveling. It gives us something to look forward to when we’re busy growing ARcare.”

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