Arkansas Rural Health Partnership Adds CEO

Rex Jones

One of the first things Rex Jones plans to do when he becomes CEO of Arkansas Rural Health Partnership of Lake Village is to meet with each hospital administrator in the network.

Jones, who will become CEO on May 1, said he wants to learn from executives what the nonprofit can do for them.

“I really want to find out from the CEOs individually what direction we need to take,” said Jones, a hospital administrator for 25 years.

Jones will replace Mellie Bridewell, who will remain with ARHP as its president. “I will still develop a lot of the program’s long-term strategy,” said Bridewell, who founded the nonprofit in 2008. “I am a rural health care advocate.”

As CEO, Jones will work with the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, an ARHP partner, on ways to improve health care access and delivery in rural areas. ARHP has 14 rural hospital members and partners with more than 90 clinics.

Since its founding, ARHP has produced about $30 million in grants and other funds to support rural hospitals, said Brian Thomas, CEO of Jefferson Regional Medical Center of Pine Bluff and chair of ARHP.

The strength of the partnership is tied to its members collaborating “in an environment that’s not viewed as competitive …, but more in the spirit of cooperation and trying to find ways to help each other become stronger,” he said.

The organization has been growing. Between July 2019 and June 2021, ARHP added seven members, including three rural hospitals.

ARHP’s board “felt that it was time to bring someone on with rural hospital experience,” said Jones, who has been CEO of Magnolia Regional Medical Center since 2016.

The partnership’s growth led to other changes, including adding Frazier Edwards in the fall as vice president of strategic partnerships and business development to financially help rural hospitals. ARHP employs about 30 and is funded through grants and membership dues.

Jones, who has been an ARHP board member for eight years and is a past president of the board, said some CEOs might be hesitant to join ARHP at first, fearing they will be sharing trade secrets.

“But it doesn’t take long whenever they do come on board to realize that we’re all trying to pull in the same direction, and we’re not trying to take from each other,” Jones said.

The Arkansas Delta routinely scores near the bottom in health surveys. The 2021 County Health Rankings & Roadmaps report, a program of the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute, found the Arkansas counties with the lowest rankings were in the Delta: Desha, Monroe and Phillips counties.

“I think everyone has come to the realization that we’re all going to have to work together, or we’re all going to go down at the same time,” Jones said.

One of the top concerns for health care providers is recruiting health care workers. “We can’t recruit into small communities as easily as larger organizations that are in metropolitan areas,” Bridewell said.

ARHP is working to change that with several programs, including scholarships in partnership with the UAMS College of Medicine to high school students interested in a career in health care.

Nursing schools also are working with ARHP to bring more students to rural hospitals.

Other projects include health care education programs, such as a mobile simulation unit that trains providers at the hospitals.

Bridewell, who also is regional director in the UAMS Office of Strategy Management, said her proudest accomplishment at ARHP has been the founding of the organization. Arkansas was once one of six states that didn’t have a statewide rural health association.

“Agriculture is a huge economic driver for this state,” she said. “And our agricultural folks live in rural [areas], and we have to take care of them as well as everybody else who lives in rural [areas].”