Update: Murphy Family Gives $1M to UAMS Regional Campus in El Dorado

The Murphy Family Foundation and the Murphy USA Charitable Foundation have pledged $1 million over three years to the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences to support the creation of a new regional campus in El Dorado.

The campus comprises 18,000 SF in a planned 50,000-SF medical office building on the Medical Center of South Arkansas campus. A groundbreaking for that building has not been held yet, but is tentatively scheduled for this summer, UAMS’ Amy Wenger told Arkansas Business on Friday.

Wenger, vice chancellor of UAMS regional campus, also said UAMS will lease the second floor and half of the third floor of the building from MCSA for $300,000 per year for 15 years, with the option to renew on a yearly basis after that.

The project is a joint effort by UAMS and the MCSA. They aim to increase medical access in south Arkansas and train primary care physicians to work in Union County.

In a news release, UAMS said it expects to open the campus in January and begin training family medicine residents by July 2023.

“I want to thank The Murphy Family Foundation and the Murphy USA Charitable Foundation for their commitment to an ongoing partnership to bring better health care to El Dorado,” UAMS Chancellor Cam Patterson said in a news release. “We are tremendously grateful for their investment in UAMS as we work to increase the quality of care in Union County.”

The El Dorado campus would be UAMS’ ninth regional operation and provide “an influx of physicians and health care professionals in Union County and south Arkansas to create a sustainable educational and training pipeline and make it easier to maintain consistent levels of care.”

Simmons Bank donated $25,000 to the campus in October, the same month Arkansas Business reported that UAMS planned to open a clinic associated with its residency program in a new medical office building on the MCSA campus at 700 W. Grove St.

Wenger said UAMS has already raised $3.6 million of the $10 million it is looking to raise to support the project long term; it is also seeking a program director for the residency program.

The first residents should begin training in July 2023, with a goal of training 12 residents — four residents each year in three classes. The residents would train at MCSA, getting experience with inpatient care.

“Data shows us that physicians are more likely to live and practice in the community or the general area or state where they’ve completed their residency training,” Wenger told Arkansas Business in October. “We just feel really strongly that the graduates of the family medicine program in El Dorado will really like the community and they’ll end up staying.”