ACH Proclaims NWA Presence

When a frantic parent calls in the middle of the night, chances are an Arkansas Children’s Hospital nurse is answering the phone in Little Rock.

That’s just one of the statewide support services Dr. Jonathan Bates, president and CEO of Arkansas Children’s Hospital, wanted guests to know.

Bates was in Springdale on Dec. 8 for an open house to celebrate the permanent presence of an Arkansas Children’s Hospital Foundation regional office in Northwest Arkansas. ACH Foundation opened an office in a temporary Bentonville location in 2004 and moved into its current location at the JTL Shop Building in October.

ACH Foundation serves as a fundraising arm for ACH and related institutions. Statewide, ACH has a staff of about 20 fundraisers that brought in nearly $12 million in fiscal 2005, which ended June 30.

Last year, ACH served more than 9,000 children in a six-county area of Northwest Arkansas, which includes Benton, Boone, Carroll, Madison, Newton and Washington counties. About 6,000 of those children were from Benton and Washington counties.

Bates said ACH hopes to expand its presence in Northwest Arkansas within the next few years, starting with the placement of a specialty pediatric physician in the area.

Long term, an ambulatory surgery center isn’t out of the question, he said. It’s a matter of the fixed operation costs matching up with the right patient mix, he said. ACH specialty physicians from Little Rock already travel to Northwest Arkansas to perform procedures, and ACH also maintains a partnership with University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. UAMS, apart from ACH, recently submitted preliminary plans to the city of Lowell to build a two-story 40,000-SF pediatric facility on the corner of Dixieland Road and Latham Street.

The Little Rock campus of ACH annually admits more than 11,000 inpatients, performs more than 7,400 surgeries and sees more than 38,000 emergency-room visits.