The Courier www.couriernews.com Sunday, Nov. 2, 2014 17P

Submitted by Saint Mary’s Regional Medical Center

Committed to meet-ing the growing medical needs of the River Valley well into the future, Saint Mary’s Regional Health System (SMRHS) has ag-gressively recruited sev-enteen family medicine and specialty physicians in the past 30 months. This brings the total num-ber of active physicians on the medical staff to more than 100. In addi-tion, physician assistants and nurse practitioners have joined the hospital’s network of clinics and hospital emergency de-partment to serve higher patient volumes, improve accessibility and reduce wait times.

“Improving accessibil-ity to safe, quality health-care is an ongoing goal of Saint Mary’s Regional Health System. As our region grows, and many individuals and families gain access to coverage, Saint Mary’s is well posi-tioned to provide better access to more physicians in more specialties close to home,” said Mike Mc-Coy, Interim Chief Execu-tive Offi cer.

“Our demonstrated commitment to excel-lence, investments in

evolving technology, and our focus on quality and safety, have helped us to attract some of the best and brightest medical pro-fessionals in their fi elds to join our staff,” added McCoy. “We continue to build on our foundation of outstanding physicians, with ongoing efforts to en-gage additional specialists through 2015.”

New Millard-Henry Clinic designed with

patients in mind

Millard-Henry Clinic (MHC), part of the Saint Mary’s Regional Health System, is one of the largest multi-specialty clinics in Arkansas. The new 48,000 square foot, patient-friendly medical building opened in Febru-ary 2014.

Built at a cost of $6.2 million, the new three-story clinic was designed utilizing “Lean concepts,” which promote more ef-fi cient patient access and optimize patient time while in the facility. This

translates into more avail-able appointments and reduced wait times for patients. The clinic cur-rently accommodates 28 medical practices. With the addition of a pulmo-nologist in mid-Novem-ber, the clinic will be at capacity. Millard-Henry Clinic is home to medical specialties including In-ternal Medicine, Family Practice, Pediatrics, Urol-ogy, General Surgery and Pulmonology.

The Millard-Henry campus is also home to their Obstetrics/Gyne-cology medical offi ces. General Surgery, is now located in the main clinic and the Obstetrics/Gyne-cology Clinic is solely ded-icated to women’s health and cosmetic surgery. Additional Millard-Henry Clinics are located in At-kins and Dover.

Tim Whetstine, Ex-ecutive Director of Clinic Operations for SMRHS, explained: “Quality care has never been more ac-cessible than it is today. MHC Open Access is at its

best with six new physi-cians joining the medical staff in 2013 and three ad-ditional physicians com-ing on board this year. When you call for an ap-pointment you can expect to hear ‘Yes, the doctor is in and can see you.’ Also, our mid-level providers allow an additional av-enue so you can address your healthcare needs when it suits your sched-ule. Whether your needs are routine or urgent, our clinic enterprise is here to take care of you and your family.”

Cardiology Associates of North Central Arkansas

adds cardiologists to Cardiac and Vascular

Care Team

Heart disease kills more people than any other dis-ease and continues to be the No. 1 cause of deaths in Arkansas and accounts for about 26 percent of deaths each year in our state. Saint Mary’s has as-sembled a dedicated team

of cardiologists devoted to decreasing this statistic.

The highly-trained, board-certifi ed cardiolo-gists include, Dr. Sastry Prayaga, and Dr. Ahmed Athar, both intervention-al cardiologists, plus Drs. Dai-Yuan Wang and Shu-ja Rasool, invasive cardi-ologists. These physicians make emergency cardiac care available in the River Valley.

Investing $5.1 million in life-saving cardiac and limb-saving catheteriza-tion technologies, Saint Mary’s completed sweep-ing capital improvements in two state-of-the-art Cardiac Catheterization Labs for diagnostic and interventional cardiovas-cular and vascular proce-dures.

The addition of the re-gion’s fi rst 128-Slice Com-puted Tomography (CT) scanner to Saint Mary’s arsenal of diagnostic im-aging technology revo-lutionizes non-invasive procedures including Coronary Angiography. This technology is partic-

ularly effective in study-ing the beating heart, pro-ducing clear non-invasive images of the heart and its major vessels. The scans can help in determining whether fatty deposits or calcium deposits have built up in the coronary arteries. They can also be timed to use only images gathered between con-tractions, so that the heart and its vessels can be seen without blurring caused by motion.

“This new technology will give us more versatil-ity in our imaging proto-cols,” said interventional cardiologist Dr. Ahmed Athar, board certifi ed in cardiovascular CT. “Rath-er than a one-scan-fi ts-all approach, we tailor each exam to meet the patient’s specifi c needs.”

Cardiology Associatesof North Central Arkansas is located at 2205 West Main in Russellville. To schedule an appointment please call 479-968-4311.

Urology Associates of North Central

Arkansas continues to grow

Urologist Dr. Kenneth

Saint Mary’s Regional Health SystemAccess expands to clinics, physicians and specialties

“We continue to build on our foundation of outstanding physicians, with ongoing efforts to engage additional specialists through 2015.”

Mike McCoyInterim chief executive officer

Please see ST. MARY’S | 18P

18P Sunday, Nov. 2, 2014 www.couriernews.com The Courier

9 1 4 W E S T B S T R E E T, R U S S E L LV I L L E IN-HOME PERSONAL CARE

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Your guide to

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Find your provider by

❖ Specialty or Treatment

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201 E. Second StreetRussellville, AR 72801

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Meacham provides much needed urology services to our community. Now located in Millard-Hen-ry Clinic at 101 Skyline Drive, Meacham’s prac-tice offers the experience, technology and surgical precision that you expect. Call (479) 498-6581 for more information.

Rural Outreach Clinic

Valley Health Services in Hector is an additional Saint Mary’s outreach clinic offering substantial healthcare services for those in rural northeast-ern Pope County. Can-dace Welcher, APN is the primary healthcare pro-vider at this facility. This clinic may be reached at

(479) 284-5001.

Outpatient Therapy Center

Complimenting the growth of specialty ser-vices, Saint Mary’s Out-patient Therapy Center expands its offerings. For those with heart and lung problems, the Therapy Center provides physical therapy with telemetry, and oxygen saturation monitoring. Patients with diabetes can participate in both group and indi-vidual classes for diabetes self-management educa-tion. In addition, treat-ment programs are avail-able for incontinence for both men and women. Lymphedema treatment is available for patiets with chronic swelling of

limbs. Call Melanie Mul-linax at 479-968-3733 for more information or visit the Center at 809 West Main. Talk to your doctor regarding a referral.

Extraordinary care always

Saint Mary’s Regional Health System with its network of clinics works diligently to deliver ex-traordinary healthcare to patients throughout the Arkansas River Val-ley region. The dedicated physicians, employees, volunteers and boardmembers continue the passionate pursuit of ex-cellence and strive to ex-ceed the expectations of those we serve. To learn more visit www.saint-marysregional.com.

ST. MARY’S

CONTINUED FROM 17P

BY SHANE CRABTREERussellville’s economy

boomed in May.The economic boost

was attributed to the many state and national events taking place in and around Russellville.

Arkansas Tech Univer-sity’s Tech Field hosted the NCAA Division II Central Regional Base-ball Championship. Rus-sellville High School‚Äôs Cyclone Stadium and the Soccer Complex hosted the Class 6A State Tour-nament.

Throw in the Bassmas-ter Elite Series fi shing tournament on Lake Dar-danelle, and tourists came to Russellville in waves.

Christie Graham, exec-utive director of tourism for Russellville, said the events were more than successful, drawing in positive business all over town.

“We have several events occurring at once and consecutively, and so far, it has been very suc-cessful,” Graham said. “When event participants come to Russellville, they rarely come alone. They often have family and friends that accompany

them and there are al-ways people who travel to see these events. That means more hotel rooms are rented out and more money spent at area res-taurants.”

Michael Mulone, direc-tor of events and tourism for B.A.S.S, said that the Bassmaster Elite Series tournament has a much larger economic impact than what meets the eye.

“After we host our Bass-master tournaments, we allow our cities to do an economic impact analy-sis,” Mulone said. “On average, the cities have reported $2.5 million in revenue. But even more, there is a residual effect.”

Mulone said after a large event, such as Bass-master Elite, goes through a city, there is a lingering

effect that often leads to a further economic impact.

“Our tournament will air on national television, and there will be coverage in the Bassmaster maga-zine,” Mulone said. “And even more, say someone such as Kevin VanDam from Michigan does well while fi shing somewhere. People will respond to that by going to check the location out themselves, and that goes further than the media does.”

Johnny Johnson, Rus-sellville School District athletic director, said hosting the 6A soccer tournament also impact-ed the local economy.

“There are 26 soc-cer teams, not counting Russellville’s teams, at-tending the tournament this year,” Johnson said.

“These teams are coming from places as far away as Texarkana, and they are staying in our area.”

But there was also a small amount of head-shaking from event or-ganizers such as John-son and Mulone, who said several of the events could have had a greater instantaneous impact on Russellville.

Their reasoning? There simply wasn’t enough space to temporarily house so many guests at one time. Graham said many hotels across the River Valley area were in-deed booked.

“There is a lot going on right now,” Graham said. “On top of all the events that are taking place, the nuclear plant is undergo-ing maintenance. They have brought in a lot of personnel, and they are staying in area hotels as well.”

Entergy was also per-forming routine refueling and maintenance, often referenced as an outage, on Arkansas Nuclear One’s (ANO) second reac-tor. As a general practice, Entergy supplies the facil-ity with crews specifi cally trained for the refueling and maintenance process.

“Every 18 months, we take down each unit and we replace about one-third of the fuel bundles in the reactor core,” Sarah Millard, communications coordinator at Arkansas Nuclear One, said.

“We generally bring in supplemental workers who are specialists and engineers, and we usu-ally have about 1,000 come into the River Val-ley area.”

While ANO’s routine maintenance brings an additional 1,000 people into the Russellville area, the hotel rooms and ser-

vices consumed by Enter-gy’s staff can sometimes confl ict with those seek-ing temporary residence while attending other Russellville events.

Mulone said that ANO’s maintenance came as a surprise and caused sev-eral last-minute changes.

“When we planned the Bassmaster tournament, maintenance at the nu-clear plant was reported to be in March,” Mulone said. “I’m sure they had their reasons, but it made it very diffi cult at times to fi nd hotel rooms for our people.” Mulone said re-gardless of the situation, the tournament went on and is going better than expected. As far as the economy, it is expected to continue its present course for a while longer. According to Graham, even after events begin to settle, another one pops up.

“We had the RussVegas half marathon draw in an estimated 2,000 people and we estimate that sev-eral hundred people are in town for the bass fi sh-ing tournament,” Graham said. “And even after all of this, we have a week-long break, and then we have the Miss Arkansas Teen pageant. We are staying busy.”

Local economy soars due to recent events“We have several events occurring at once and consecutively, and so far, it has been very successful. When event participants come to Russellville, they rarely come alone. They often have family and

friends that accompany them and there are always people who travel to see these events. That means more hotel rooms are rented out

and more money spent at area restaurants.”

Christie GrahamExecutive director of tourism for Russellville