Doug Babb, CEO
January 5, 2010
Welcome to Cooper Clinic’s redesigned website!
We hope you find it easy to navigate, user-friendly, and full of valuable information. In a world closely linked by electronic communication, it is important that our website serve as a primary portal to Cooper Clinic services and a principal source of medical information. We will continually expand the capabilities of the site, so mark it as one of your “favorites” and check back with us often.
Updating our website is part of our on-going commitment to look at everything we do from a patient perspective – and then improve. In fact, focusing on continual improvement is our job number 1. That means recognizing there is always “room for improvement,” and listening to our patients’ concerns, problems, and ideas. But, listening is not enough. After we hear from you, we must revisit how we do things, and make constructive changes.
No doubt you have noticed some of the positive changes we have already implemented to improve your patient experience. In 2008, we initiated a new patient bill format which made it clear what services were performed, how much had been paid by insurance, and how much remained to be paid. The Clinic also made substantial investments in innovative medical technology. We installed this area’s first and only Bilateral Breast MRI and the only permanent PET-CT for early and effective diagnosis of cancer.
In 2009, we installed an integrated, state-of-the-art communication system. It will enable our patients to phone our 17 Clinic locations more easily and our employees to work more efficiently. You have told us the environment in which you receive medical care is important, so we have remodeled many of our facilities, added a blanket warmer for our chemotherapy patients, and relocated several of our physicians to new offices. In our Main Clinic, we renovated the lobby, resurfaced our parking lot, created more and closer handicapped parking, and improved our landscaping.
While making these and other improvements, Cooper Clinic continues to recruit additional physicians and to replace doctors as they retire. We want our patients to have access to complete and quality care without having to leave our community. Our approach to recruiting is to be highly selective. We focus on physicians who are qualified, well-trained, and want to make Fort Smith their permanent home. We search for candidates who are originally from our area, have family in our region, or attended school in this part of the country. It’s important that they possess excellent communication skills to help you participate in your medical care.
We also look for doctors who appreciate Cooper Clinic’s strength and independence. Although some Cooper Clinic physicians have offices in the St. Edward Centers of Excellence, our Clinic is not owned by St. Edward. While our doctors admit patients to area hospitals, they are totally separate from these hospitals—and have been for 90 years. Our independence allows our doctors to focus on the health of our patients, not the health of a hospital or corporate office.
Our independence also allows all decisions affecting your care at Cooper Clinic to be made locally—and that makes us unique in this community. Other large physician groups in this area are owned by hospitals and/or national healthcare conglomerates. HMA, based in Naples, Florida, owns Sparks and their physician group. The Mercy System, based in St. Louis, Missouri, owns St. Edward and their physician group. In contrast, our local doctors own Cooper Clinic.
Because we are 100% local, we have a vested interest in the success of this region—the schools, the economy, and the growth, as well as the health of its residents. With 100 physicians and nurse practitioners plus 535 dedicated employees, Cooper Clinic is one of this area’s largest employers. We take that leadership role seriously by proudly supporting many local events and non-profit organizations.
Clearly, Cooper Clinic plays a vital role as a community leader and the preferred healthcare provider for many residents. Each time a patient sees a physician, has blood drawn for lab tests, or undergoes a medical test, we call that experience a “visit.” Last year, approximately 500,000 patient visits occurred at Cooper Clinic facilities. Our physicians also made more than 50,000 patient visits at local hospitals.
But make no mistake, being a physician-owned group without big corporate funding is challenging. We do not rely on out-of-state corporate profits for support; our success depends solely on providing quality care for our patients. We deal with serious issues created by continued reductions in reimbursement, frivolous malpractice claims, and recent healthcare legislation. But independent, local, and conservative management since 1920 has positioned Cooper Clinic as a stable organization in an unstable environment. And we intend to stay that way.
This Spring, we will ask our patients for feedback on how the Clinic is performing through a patient satisfaction survey. This survey will be made available in all departments at all 17 Clinic locations as well as on this website. We look forward to your honest and direct assessment of the Clinic. It is your input that will help us remain your healthcare provider of choice.
Thank you for visiting our website, and on behalf of all our employees and physicians, thank you for choosing Cooper Clinic.