Mercy Clinic, RVMC pursue ‘integration’ deal

The physicians at River Valley Musculoskeletal Center (RVMC) may soon be part of the Mercy Clinic that provides physicians for St. Edward Mercy Medical Center in Fort Smith.

St. Edward issued a statement Friday (Nov. 15) saying a letter of intent has been signed between the two groups that allows for a 120-day period of exclusive negotiations. The integration model used by St. Edward means RVMC would not be purchased by the hospital system.

RVMC operates a clinic at 79th Street and Phoenix Avenue in Fort Smith.

The integration would pull the 15 doctors at RVMC — specializing in fields including sports medicine, podiatry, neurosurgery and orthopedics — under the Mercy Clinic umbrella.

According to Dr. Cole Goodman, president/CEO of Mercy Clinic of Fort Smith, Mercy’s integration model is that the doctors are self governing rather than being employees of the hospital. Doctors make decisions on capital improvements, capital plans and leadership, he explained.

Goodman also said the physician board of mercy clinic has voted unanimously to pursue the integration, as did the local health system board made up of community leaders.

The St. Edward release said hospital officials has just completed a “yearlong community master planning process,” through which officials decided to “partner with physicians who are interested in being an integrated part of the Mercy system.”

“Mercy’s model of integration partners the health system with physicians in order to ensure the community has exceptional health care,” Jeff Johnston, president/CEO of St. Edward Mercy, said in a statement. “The integrated strategy also maximizes the benefits of our electronic health record to provide a seamless continuum of care for patients.”

Recruiting and retaining doctors could be another benefit of the St. Edward integration push, Goodman said. During the past few years, the Fort Smith region has lost doctors faster than they can be replaced. (The City Wire documented part of the problem in this February 2009 article.)

“The physicians we have in this area are outstanding, but we just don’t have enough of them. … The ability to integrate allows us to have some financial wherewithal to recruit physicians,” Goodman said. “And it also allows the physicians to be in control of the practice and how the practice is managed. I can tell you that that (professional management) is very important to physicians these days.”

RVMC and Mercy have worked together in recent months to develop a call schedule that combines the three RVMC neurosurgeons with the two new Mercy Clinic neurosurgeons “to ensure the community has full-time neurosurgery coverage again for the first time since 2005,” noted the St. Edward statement.

A $2.72 million lawsuit against RVMC related to the abandoned plans for a $15.4 million specialty hospital in Fort Smith is not part of the integration process. Erdman Co., a Madison, Wisc.-based architectural and engineering company, seeks payment for services on the project.

“I think right now what they are working on is just the integration,” said St. Edward spokeswoman Laura Keep, adding that any legal issues on the RVMC side are separate from the integration deal.