“We’re doing everything that it makes sense to do,” Howard Memorial Hospital administrator Debra Wright told the Nashville Rotary Club, last Wednesday.
Wright, who became the administrator right after HMH moved into its new campus, spoke to the club about the hospital’s expanding services.
She said she hated it when someone had to go out of town for any kind of medical treatment.
Within three days of her talk to the club, the hospital was to host an open house at its new Medical Office Building 2, and formally introduce a new physician, Dr. Brian Caldwell. Also opening soon is the new Compass Outpatient Behavioral Health building. The new facilities make a total of four buildings added at the campus since the new hospital opened in 2009.
The hospital was founded in 1949, and was named “Memorial” in honor of soldiers, sailors and airmen from the area who died in WWII. It is now a 20-bed critical access hospital fully accredited by the Arkansas Department of Health.
HMH is also a Level IV Trauma Center. “Our ER is a very busy place,” she said.
The hospital averages more than 800 emergency room visits per month.
HMH is also able to utilize the most modern diagnostic equipment.
Wright had a handout which contained a list of the top 10 priorities. Among them were kidney dialysis, dermatology, a pain clinic, am allergy clinic and others.
She described herself as a fiscal conservative and said that any new hospital effort must also be able to pay for itself.
Rotarian Bill Craig, the HMH chief financial officer, accompanied Wright to the club’s meeting. Wright was introduced by program chairman Dennis Green, and club president Glenn Lance presided. A guest was Howard County Sheriff Bryan McJunkins. Loren Hinton was proposed for membership.
Before Wright’s program began, club president Lance announced that the whole of Africa had been polio-free for one year, and that after two more years of the absence of the disease, the continent would be declared polio-free. Rotary, and the Nashville chapter, have supported Rotary International’s effort to rid the world of polio.
