After Merger, OrthoArkansas Looks to Expand

6. Ortho Arkansas left Doctors Plaza in Little Rock to develop its own building at Fair Park ahead of its merger with Arkansas Specialty, creating the state's largest orthopedics group.

OrthoArkansas of Little Rock, which in January merged with Arkansas Specialty Orthopaedics, wants to add 10 to 15 physicians in the next three to five years.

“Physician growth is our No. 1 issue and then innovation,” said Dr. Tad Pruitt, co-president of OrthoArkansas. The new doctors would help cover OrthoArkansas’ nine locations in central Arkansas and replace physicians who retire from the orthopedic group, currently owned by 32 doctors.

Meanwhile, the orthopedic practice recently marked a surgical highlight. In September, OrthoArkansas’ Dr. Eric Gordon completed the first outpatient total knee replacement surgery performed in Arkansas. The outpatient procedure has been done in locations outside Arkansas, and OrthoArkansas had been studying the operation for about two years, he said.

“There’s enough data behind it to prove that it’s safe, efficient and can be done,” said Gordon, who along with Pruitt recently met with Arkansas Business in OrthoArkansas’ $22.5 million, 80,500-SF building just off Interstate 630 in midtown Little Rock.

Gordon said the cost of the knee replacement procedure varies, but Medicare pays about $15,000 per joint replacement. And Medicare’s payment depends on what part of the country the surgery is performed in, he said.

Gordon said the technical part of the surgery didn’t change, but the care given to patients before and after the operation did.

To prepare for the operation, patients and a family member attend a class about two week before the procedure. “That’s another thing we found to be really important is family involvement,” Gordon said. Patients also start physical therapy to build up their strength.

“A lot of these patients with knee replacements, they’re sore. They’re not sick,” he said, and don’t need to spend a night in the hospital. “We can save Medicare 30% versus what they pay in the hospital.”

Pruitt said OrthoArkansas does about 1,000 knee replacements a year. He declined to release revenue figures.

The Merger

Pruitt said that in the past few years doctors at Arkansas Specialty and OrthoArkansas realized they had a lot in common. “And as we began to talk about that and talk about what each of our groups wanted to do in the future, we realized that we could do that better together than trying to do it separately,” he said.

So the groups decided to merge the practices.

Gordon said both groups could have survived without the partnership, “but we want to thrive.”

Pruitt said bringing the two physician groups together was “a huge operational challenge. … But we’re on schedule with the progress that we want to be making, and I think we’re definitely beginning to see the benefits of all that.”

OrthoArkanas recently extended its hours for its orthopedic urgent care clinic in Little Rock to 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Friday and from 8 a.m. to noon on Saturday. It previously had been open only after hours.

“That gives us the ability to see virtually any patient virtually anytime within about 24 hours, and patients don’t necessarily need to go to the ER with relatively minor injuries, … they can just come straight to us,” Pruitt said.

Over the next two to three years, OrthoArkanas is looking to open three to five of its urgent care clinics in central Arkansas, he said.

OrthoArkansas is also considering offering — possibly next year — telemedicine for patients. “There are patient apps now that … can help monitor how the patients are doing,” Pruitt said. “That’s one way you can increase access to people that are far away. … So we could see partnering with physical therapy offices, primary care offices and other places to help deliver that.”