![North Arkansas Regional Medical Center [photo provided]](https://arkansasbusiness.wppcdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Hospital_1_opt-e1760044083827-920x615.jpg)
About 40% of the hospitals in Arkansas lost money in 2024, continuing a trend in recent years.
On Arkansas Business’ list of the largest Hospitals and Medical Centers, 39 hospitals out of 95 reported a loss during 2024.
Bo Ryall, the president and CEO of the Arkansas Hospital Association, said that several hospitals are still seeing the costs of supplies, pharmaceuticals and labor remain higher than before COVID. “But also when you take into account the increased expenses, the revenues have not kept up over this time period,” he said.
There have been “marginal increases” for Medicare reimbursements and no increases for Medicaid, Ryall said.
Hospital executives also told Arkansas Business they are concerned about the eventual impact the One Big Beautiful Bill Act will have on hospitals. The OBBBA will slash about $1 trillion from health programs, resulting in an estimated 10 million people in the U.S. losing their health insurance, according to the Center for Medicare Advocacy. The bill also will change the Affordable Care Act marketplace. Tax credits to help offset the cost of ACA insurance will expire at the end of the year, and it’s estimated that about 5 million people will lose their health insurance as a result, the Center for Medicare Advocacy said.
“If those premium tax credits go away, then people will choose not to have insurance,” Ryall said. “They’ll still require health care services and end up at the emergency department, which is the most expensive way to receive care.”
The people who think they’re going to need health care will be more willing to pay more for coverage, but those who don’t think they’ll need insurance won’t buy it. “You have to have healthy people in the [insurance] pool to make it work out,” Ryall said.
Several hospitals said they aren’t facing as critical a labor shortage as during the height of COVID – but there’s still a shortage.
“Our use of contract labor over the past 12 months has been reduced back to pre-pandemic levels,” said Troy Wells, the president and CEO of Baptist Health of Little Rock.
Baptist Health fills about 100 to 200 positions with contract labor, as opposed to 400 to 600 positions during COVID.
“There hasn’t been a year where we didn’t have labor shortages,” said Steven Webb, president and CEO of White River Health System of Batesville. “It’s much better now than it was in the pandemic.”
CHI St. Vincent Infirmary Medical Center
CHI St. Vincent is planning to widen its heart care services.
The $10 million Anthony Center for Advanced Cardiac Care at CHI St. Vincent Infirmary in Little Rock is as result of a recent $5 million donation from Isabel and John Ed Anthony. The remaining $5 million for the project came from other donors.
The center, which will be inside the Little Rock hospital, will “enhance our ability to provide the highest level of cardiac care to patients in Arkansas,” said Dr. William G. Jones, president of CHI St. Vincent Infirmary of Little Rock.
Construction on the project is expected to take about two years, he said.
CHI recently hired a new cardiac surgeon, who started in July, and another surgeon. “I would anticipate that we will add additional physicians as well,” Jones said.
CHI St. Vincent Infirmary doesn’t have any job or service line cuts planned in the next 12 months, but that could change. “We live and operate in the most challenging reimbursement environment in the United States in Arkansas,” Jones said. “So it’s necessary for not only St. Vincent’s, but all of our hospitals, to continue to evaluate each of our service lines.”
CHI St. Vincent is using its parent company’s internal artificial intelligence assistant called Insightli. CHI’s parent company, CommonSpirit Health of Chicago, provides the AI program to solve problems without sharing private information outside of the system, according to CommonSpirit’s website.
“We were using that to help us do some of our business analytics and some of our report composition,” Jones said. “It’s been a real time saver.”
He said that in the future, AI will help “enhance our diagnostic capabilities and be able to make more out of existing tests or combinations of tests.”
He also said that AI will be able to monitor patients and be able to pick up on subtle changes in vital signs or other parameters before providers would have recognized it.
“It’s exciting,” he said. “But I think that we’ve got a long way to go to take the potential of AI to the bedside and make it really help us improve care.”
Baptist Health
Troy Wells is hopeful.
Wells, the president and CEO of Baptist Health of Little Rock, said it’s unclear what the impact will be to the health system if the Affordable Care Act’s enhanced premium tax credits expire at the end of the year as scheduled. The credits are touted as helping expand enrollment in the ACA Marketplace from 11 million to more than 24 million, according to the health policy research firm KFF. If the enhanced credits go away, people will qualify for a smaller tax credit while others will lose eligibility, according to KFF.
“I’m hearing more and more support for maintaining those tax credits going into 2026,” said Wells, the head of the state’s largest health care provider with 12 hospitals. “When your congressional delegation understands the issue and they know the impact that it can have on people, hopefully there’ll be some recognition of how important it is, and some willingness to extend those” credits.
In the meantime, Baptist Health is planning a $30 million renovation of its Baptist Health College Little Rock. The project calls for adding clinical training technology “that will be a better learning experience for students,” Wells said. The college will be able to simulate clinical environments for students.
Baptist also is leaning on AI for its revenue cycle process. The health system has seen productivity improvements in the documentation and coding of claims, he said. “We don’t need as many people as we used to, but the good news is we couldn’t find them to begin with,” Wells said.
He said he’s optimistic about the use of AI in clinical settings down the road. But for now, Baptist is “going to be much slower to adopt that in a clinical setting, because we’re so careful about the impact to a patient and to a clinician.”
Baptist Health uses ambient listening technology, or programs that listen to the provider and patient during exams and then documents them in the clinical record.
“And so all the clinician then has to do is look at it and say, yeah, that’s right, and they move on to the next patient,” Wells said. “So it really saves doctors’ time. … We’re really optimistic about the future of that type of technology.”
White River Health
White River Health is charting ways to grow.
This fall, the nonprofit health system based in Batesville will begin construction to add about 12,000 SF to its Oncology Center.
The project will “allow us to recruit additional providers in the future, and it’s going to be a better place for our patients to receive their chemo and infusion treatments,” said Steven Webb, who became president and CEO of White River Health in May. He said the $5.5 million project is being funded through the White River Health Foundation. The addition is expected to be completed in 2027.
White River also recently bought a building that will double the size of its cardiology services. Webb said that the project is in the design phase and he doesn’t have a timeline on when it will be completed or an estimated cost. “But we’re excited about what that means for this community and improving access for cardiology,” he said.
White River has five cardiologists, and it’s actively recruiting more.
White River Health also is looking to fill 148 positions. Some of the positions include an administrator for Stone County Medical Center in Mountain Home, as the current administrator, Kathy Thomas, is retiring in December 2026. White River Health also has 51 nursing positions open.
With the uncertainty surrounding the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, and the possibility that some people might lose their health insurance, Webb said that White River is working to make sure that people keep their coverage.
“Every slight change in Medicaid or Medicare has a tremendous impact on our hospital,” he said. “So we’re going to be very proactive in making sure that we keep our enrollment up.”
The system will be looking for community partners to help people keep their insurance.
Meanwhile, White River is tapping into new technology to be more efficient. It has been using artificial intelligence in its billing office and in its case management department to assist with coding and documentation.
“It’s helping us run some prior authorizations,” Webb said. “Our physicians are using it for ambient listening and helping them with their clinical documentation and getting their charts done in a more timely way so they can spend more time with patients.”
White River administrators also have used AI to help with note taking and presentations.
“So we’re going to continue to use AI and look for new ways to use it and implement it into our organization,” he said.
![North Arkansas Regional Medical Center [photo provided]](https://arkansasbusiness.wppcdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Hospital_1_opt-e1760044083827.jpg)
North Arkansas Regional Medical Center
North Arkansas Regional Medical Center in Harrison is getting ready to begin using a new electronic medical record system in November.
The new system is expected to make the 120-bed hospital more efficient, said Sammie Cribbs Roberson, the hospital’s president and CEO.
She said the cost of the system is “in the millions.” The price, however, includes the maintenance and security costs and connecting to all of its outside networks.
She said that health care always seems to be in a constant state of change. “We’re still really working to understand what the Big Beautiful Bill really entails, and how it’s going to affect hospitals and health systems,” Roberson said.
“We certainly know that there are some potential good things in there,” she said.
She said that once she learns of the total impact of the bill, the hospital will “improvise, adapt and overcome.”
Roberson said there are no plans for layoffs or reduction in services in the next 12 months.
“Our priority is to continue providing high-quality care and supporting our incredible staff,” she said. “But like every other health care organization, if funding or reimbursements were to significantly change for the future, we would have to carefully evaluate all of our options.”
St. Bernards Healthcare
St. Bernards Healthcare of Jonesboro is adding doctors and expanding services to help people in northeast Arkansas and the Missouri Bootheel.
“We’re fortunate to be in a position where we can step in and fill some of those needs in many instances,” said Chris Barber, president and CEO of St. Bernards Healthcare.
In its 2026 fiscal year, St. Bernards plans to spend between $40 million and $50 million on capital projects.
Those projects include expanding the surgery department and the labor and delivery area on its campus at St. Bernards Medical Center in Jonesboro.
It also has been adding physicians. During the summer, St. Bernards hired 22 doctors, and “we’ve already got several committed for 2026, and beyond,” Barber said. The newly added physicians are high-end specialists for practices such as hand surgery, neurosurgery, neonatology and radiation oncology.
It also has added resource centers for prenatal care in several cities, including Jonesboro, Walnut Ridge, Osceola, Paragould and, most recently, Wynne.
“And we anticipate there will be additional locations in the coming months,” Barber said.
In November, St. Bernards Medical Center became the first health system in the state to start the Maternal Life360 HOME program to provide services for high-risk pregnancies.
St. Bernards also is using AI to improve efficiency.
It uses Ambient AI, which provides real-time medical dictation to be used for patient records. St. Bernards also is using Rapid AI that will scan medical images to identify strokes faster.
Barber said AI also is being used to analyze quality metrics to provide advanced cyber security protections and protect patient data and maintain systems.
He said there is “quite a bit of activity in AI,” and sees a lot of benefits to using it.
“Obviously you have to have some guard rails, and we have a whole governance team that focuses on AI,” he said. “So any of these products will run through this multistakeholder AI governance team to really fully vet some of these.”
He said some work and some don’t.
“But that’s part of the process,” Barber said. “It’s been encouraging. We’re excited about the potential future.”
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