President of Mercy Hospital Fort Smith

Starting at age 14, Ryan Gehrig, joined in a family tradition by leaving his home in Muenster, Texas, to attend Subiaco Academy, a Catholic College Preparatory boarding school.

“My father and older brother went to Subiaco, and it was great experience moving away from home at an early age and building a foundation in Benedictine principles of humility, service and hospitality,” Gehrig said. “I may have not have realized it at the time, but God certainly played a key role in my choice of careers. A higher power helped guide me.”

His faith-based foundation has served him well in both his current role at Mercy Hospital Fort Smith and his previous healthcare management positions. At Mercy, the mission statement is, “As the Sisters of Mercy before us, we bring to life the healing ministry of Jesus through our compassionate care and exceptional service.”

By keeping the goal of service to others at the forefront, Gehrig has made great strides in the two years he has been at the helm of Mercy Fort Smith. Fort Smith, which serves a 13-county rural area with a high poverty rate among the 440,000 residents, is extremely underserved by physicians. It needs to add 134 primary care physicians just to meet national minimum standards.

In October the new $42-million Mercy Orthopedic Hospital in Fort Smith opened as a 24-bed stand-alone hospital designed to provide complete care for healthy patients in need of total joint replacement. Mercy Fort Smith, which has 2,100 employees, is soon to be a 500-bed system.

Mercy has also added three new clinics this year. Gehrig said the new facilities are critical for attracting more physicians. This August the hospital opened a new $5.3-million Mercy branded clinic and celebrated a $5.1-million expansion and renovation of the radiation oncology department inside the Hembree Mercy Cancer Center.

“If you are recruiting physicians and can’t show them where they will practice, and they have five or six other options, you are not going to be successful,” Gehrig said. “That has been why we have been very focused on building new state-of-the-art clinics. We have built three clinics the past two years with the third set to open in November. Each one is hiring 10 to 15 practitioners.”

Mercy also has four school-based clinics that are located in Mansfield, Waldron, Cedarville and Magazine.

“I would venture to say we have more system-based partnerships with school clinics than any other large provider in the state,” Gehrig said. “The farther someone has to drive for care, the more likely they are to delay or forgo care. Our school partnerships work well. The schools have been able to secure grants for buildings that were no longer in use. Being able to get care at the clinic reduces school and work absenteeism for people leaving to drive to Fort Smith.”

When they opened the school clinic in Cedarville, ten students got glasses who couldn’t see well enough to read, and one child who was severely underweight because his teeth hurt too much to chew got dental care.”

Preferential treatment is given to students, but the clinics are open to the community. And services are available regardless of the ability of the patient to pay.

“We are blind to who is paying or if they have insurance,” Gehrig said. “We are a ministry, but operate as a business. It is a healthy balance. This region is economically distressed, so it is fortunate the state took advantage of the Medicaid expansion.”

Mercy Clinic has added 30 new physicians to the system in the past 18 months, and now has 125 primary care physicians and 25 advanced practitioners. They are continuing to recruit. Primary care visits have increased from 3,000 visits per month three years ago to close to 12,000.

“And we are nowhere near to addressing the access to care issue,” Gehrig said. “We will continue with aggressive physician recruitment, and will be looking into establishing a mobile clinic, more use of telemedicine and improving transportation. Sometimes patients still need to come to Fort Smith for care, and don’t follow up because they simply can’t afford the gas. All of the proceeds from our Foundation Gala will go to funding a non-emergency transportation system.

Gehrig also has his sights set on improving the safety culture at Mercy Fort Smith. His goal is a culture where any worker feels comfortable speaking out if something is seen that could affect the safety of a patient. The hospital is about a year into implementing a Lean Hospital Quality Improvement Program.

“Lean is not about cutting costs, but creating a culture where co-workers are problem solvers instead of everything being escalated to administration,” Gehrig said. “It is a process of coaching and mentoring our workers to enable them to problem solve. It takes patience. It takes a lot of time.”

One example of how this can work is that their inpatient rehab facility was averaging seven falls per month. At the time Gehrig was interviewed for this article, the unit had gone 50 days without a fall. He attributes that in part to the daily huddles on the unit as well as the leadership team meeting every morning at 9 a.m. to talk about flow stoppers, patient safety concerns, and other issues.

“It is amazing to see how just doing that has improved teamwork through collaboration and respect for each other and their respective challenges,” he said.

Another goal is continued outreach to fulfill their mission of addressing community health needs.

“I feel like we are doing better, but it takes time to build relationships and trust and have a cohesive approach to serving the community,” Gehrig said. “It isn’t that you solve everything, but as a community have a cohesive approach.”

Promoting physician leadership is also a vital goal. Gehrig said Mercy is serious about integration strategies that mean not just that physicians have a voice at table, but are a part of the decision-making process and a lot of times leading the decisions, implementing them and rolling them out.

For his personal life, Gehrig has a focus on being a good husband to his wife, Kristen, and father to their three children, Alyssa, 9, Drew, 8, and Anna, 2.

The family loves getting outdoors, particularly on the river, and Gehrig is a fan of stand-up paddle boarding, which he jokingly refers to as redneck surfing. This past summer, the family visited 13 states while logging 5,200 miles on their motorhome.

“Once you are a camping family, that is your idea of a great vacation,” he said. “No email, no screen time, and lots of time for creative play.”

Mercy at a Glance

Mercy’s footprint runs throughout western and northwestern Arkansas. Hospital facilities are:

Mercy Hospital Fort Smith

Mercy Orthopedic Hospital Fort Smith

Mercy Hospital Rogers

Mercy Hospital Berryville

Mercy Hospital Booneville

Mercy Hospital Ozark

Mercy Hospital Paris

Mercy Hospital Waldron

There are also more than 300 Mercy Clinic providers (doctors and advanced practitioners) in nearly 100 locations from Bella Vista to Waldron.