Friends of UAMS – Fort Smith Kicks Off

By Benjamin Waldrum

David Hunton, M.D., regales (from left) Austin, Tammy and Bennett Nolan.

David Hunton, M.D., regales (from left) Austin, Tammy and Bennett Nolan of Fort Smith.

David Hunton is chief medical officer for Mercy Hospital Fort Smith and a member of the UAMS Foundation Fund Board. His wife, Terry, is physician liaison for Mercy Health Foundation Fort Smith. The gracious hosts engaged and entertained guests, who gathered together for an evening of food and conversation about UAMS.

Attending were Ryan Gehrig, CEO of Mercy Hospital Fort Smith; Sam Sicard, president and CEO of First National Bank; and Don Heard, Ed.D., director of UAMS West.

David Hunton welcomed guests and spoke of the relationship between UAMS, the state’s only academic health center, and his family. Tory Hunton, M.D., daughter of David and Terry, received her medical degree from the UAMS College of Medicine in May. She is the sixth Hunton to graduate from UAMS, along with her parents and siblings.

“It’s hard to deny the ties that we at Mercy have to UAMS,” David Hunton said. “Forty percent of our neurosurgery goes to UAMS, and we thank them for helping us out there.”

Dr. Samuel E. Landrum and Helen Lanier attended the event, which drew close to 100 guests.

Dr. Samuel E. Landrum and Helen Lanier attended the event, which drew close to 100 guests.

He then introduced UAMS Chancellor Dan Rahn, M.D.

Rahn thanked the Huntons for opening their home, and noted that this was the eighth Friends of UAMS chapter established in the state. “Our goal is to engage you all, here in Fort Smith, as partners in furthering the mission of UAMS,” he said. “It’s about advocacy.”

UAMS is frequently seen “as a Little Rock asset,” Rahn said, but it has students and employees from every county in the state. “We have a statewide purpose and a statewide presence,” he said.

Of the 1,002 health care professionals who graduated from UAMS this year, 21 were from Sebastian County, he said. Of the 229 residents who over the years have graduated from family medicine program at UAMS West in Fort Smith, 150 will be or are practicing in state, 98 of those in  in western Arkansas. Of these practitioners, each brings an average of $845,000 in direct economic impact “not counting the health impact from the care they provide,” Rahn said, adding that economic impact includes the people they employ, taxes paid, and value added back to the community.

Friends of UAMS – Fort Smith is the eighth chapter established for the statewide advocacy program.

Friends of UAMS – Fort Smith is the eighth chapter established for the statewide advocacy program.

“It’s like that all over the state,” Rahn said.

Calling UAMS “a public asset for health,” Rahn said that public health and education, which UAMS provides, are crucial to economic development. “If we don’t have a healthy, well-educated population, we can build roads – but they’re roads to nowhere,” he said.

Rahn detailed problems that UAMS is facing over the next decade, using its $1.4 billion budget as an example. Currently, 75 percent of UAMS’ revenue comes from patient care, he said. This is due in part because though UAMS gets $106 million in appropriations, $85 million of that must be redirected for the state’s portion of Medicaid matching funds, leaving only $21 million in “unfettered support” for UAMS as a public university.

“We have to get to the point where there is a sustainable business model for UAMS over time that is not so reliant on patient care revenue,” Rahn said. “It’s hard to generate revenue in excess of what is needed to run the patient care program and maintain the capital, the equipment, the investments you need to make to maintain excellence on the clinical side while also relying on it to subsidize education. That’s not going to work in the long run.”

Rahn asked those in attendance for their support and advocacy on behalf of UAMS. “The wheels aren’t falling off. We’re not failing educationally. We’re not failing to invest in people, but we have to manage the balance sheet of the institution,” he said. “This is why we need advocacy.”

Lance Burchett, UAMS vice chancellor for institutional advancement, thanked those in attendance for their continued support of the community, and encouraged them to become friends and ambassadors for UAMS and its mission.

Other Friends of UAMS chapters are established in Texarkana, Jonesboro, Monticello, Batesville, Pine Bluff, Helena-West Helena and Hot Springs. More chapters are planned for the fall, including Fayetteville, Magnolia and Mountain Home.

For more photos from the event, visit the UAMS Flickr page.

UAMS is the state’s only health sciences university, with colleges of Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacy, Health Professions and Public Health; a graduate school; a hospital; a main campus in Little Rock; a Northwest Arkansas regional campus in Fayetteville; a statewide network of regional campuses; and eight institutes: the Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute, Jackson T. Stephens Spine & Neurosciences Institute, Harvey & Bernice Jones Eye Institute, Psychiatric Research Institute, Donald W. Reynolds Institute on Aging, Translational Research Institute, Institute for Digital Health & Innovation and the Institute for Community Health Innovation. UAMS includes UAMS Health, a statewide health system that encompasses all of UAMS’ clinical enterprise. UAMS is the only adult Level 1 trauma center in the state. UAMS has 3,275 students, 890 medical residents and fellows, and five dental residents. It is the state’s largest public employer with more than 12,000 employees, including 1,200 physicians who provide care to patients at UAMS, its regional campuses, Arkansas Children’s, the VA Medical Center and Baptist Health. Visit www.uams.edu or uamshealth.com. Find us on Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), YouTube or Instagram.

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