Arkansas Hospital Association: Helping the Helpers

Not unlike the team of doctors, nurses and specialists needed to manage an individual’s health care needs, it takes the coordinated efforts of advocates, analysts and other professionals to support the lifesaving work of hospitals and health care systems across the state. In 1929, a loosely knit but dedicated group of hospital leaders came together to focus on raising the level of Arkansas’ health care services, and the Arkansas Hospital Association was born.

Today, 94 years later, the AHA continues to be the ears, eyes and voice of Arkansas hospitals. Serving as both an advocate and a watchdog, the association has expanded to serve its 106 member institutions in a variety of ways. On the legislative front, the AHA uses its position as the state’s most trusted authority on health care to represent the concerns and interests of its members to officials at both the state and federal level. The AHA has a seat at the table for all major policy initiatives, allowing the state’s hospitals to present a united voice to lawmakers and regulatory agencies.

For hospitals themselves, the AHA gives members indispensable tools for strategic planning and quality improvement through its data and statistics. The association also offers an array of learning and networking opportunities, promoting the constant improvement of the state’s health care services and enhancing the overall level of individual patient care and public health.

The AHA’s unwavering commitment to its members and the health of Arkansans is especially evident on two recent fronts. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the association’s staff provided crucial information and support to hospitals, from weekly situation update calls to snapshot data summaries on hospitalizations, bed use and bed availability. The AHA also worked with the Arkansas Department of Human Services to secure funding for hospital preparedness and direct payments to hospital workers.

Another ongoing facet of the AHA’s work is protecting Medicaid expansion. In 2012, the AHA board voted to endorse Medicaid expansion as prescribed under the Affordable Care Act. During the 2013 legislative session, when it became clear that expanding coverage under the state Medicaid program was no longer an option, the AHA led the charge in pivoting to the “private option” alongside then-Gov. Mike Beebe and a group of Republican leaders from both chambers. Thanks to the advocacy of the AHA and other organizations, Arkansas’ Medicaid-funded insurance subsidy program was the first of its kind approved in the country.

The association has defended the program in every legislative session since. Now called ARHOME, it slashed the state’s uninsured rate by nearly half, providing access to care for almost a quarter of a million people. The cascading benefits of the program include expedited access to care, increased use of preventive services and screenings, a reduction in unnecessary ER visits and improved maternal and infant mortality rates. The improved health coverage also reduced hospital uncompensated care by 55 percent and, per the association, has been a major reason why Arkansas has not seen significant rural hospital closures.

Of course, the work is never done, and the AHA is working to address pressing issues facing its members today. One of the most urgent of these is the unprecedented economic burdens weighing down Arkansas hospitals, which the association describes as a financial emergency. More than half of the association’s hospitals have negative margins, forcing many to consider reducing services or eliminating unsustainable areas of care to try and avoid total closure.

The negative effects of these challenges are wide-ranging. Limited monetary resources hamper a hospital’s ability to recruit and retain talent; combined with the worsening shortage of health care professionals in the state, many hospitals must rely upon travel agency staffing. According to the AHA, those costs remain more than 50 percent greater than in January 2020.

The association pointed to the stagnancy of Medicaid reimbursement, paired with the rising cost of providing care, as one cause for concern. Outdated fee structures make for payments that fail to cover the costs incurred in treating patients. Despite higher pay rates, private insurance companies employ other tactics — such as pre-authorization requirements that delay physician-ordered care and down-coded claims that provide lower reimbursement for care already provided — to create an untenable environment for hospitals, patients and the communities that rely on them. The AHA is advocating for increased oversight and limits on unfair practices to help ameliorate these issues.

For those interested, there are many ways to support the AHA and its mission of enhancing health care throughout the state. Fundraising, volunteering or otherwise getting involved with your community hospital is a place to start, as well as making your voice heard to your elected representatives.

To find out more about AHA and its mission, visit ArkHospitals.org.

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If you went into a lab to create the prototypical Arkansas couple, you’d probably come out with something very close to T.J. and Mandy Lawhon. The Little Rock husband-wife duo with the small-town roots — both were born and raised in McCrory — have all the attributes of what makes Arkansans special, including devotion to family and a love of the outdoors.

“I can remember the earliest opportunities I had in the outdoors was when I was in kindergarten or first grade. I remember my dad would come get me out of school and we would duck hunt in the afternoons,” T.J. said. “We also grew up on the water, floating Arkansas rivers, canoe trips, lake trips to various lakes in the state, camping outdoors. Those were my early experiences that I had connecting with the outdoors.”

“From my perspective, coming from the small farming/hunting community that we did, you didn’t really have any other option but to be introduced to the outdoors at an early age, whether it was by your family members or you or your neighbor. That’s what you knew growing up in McCrory,” said Mandy. “My dad and I were big fishing buddies. He would take me out early mornings and hot days to go fishing. That was probably my earliest memory, and I absolutely loved the outdoors and the beauty of it. I felt there was just a peacefulness about it, being on the water, everything quiet.”

Little wonder, then, that the couple’s considerable passion for wild spaces would lead them to chair this year’s Arkansas Game and Fish Foundation Arkansas Outdoor Hall of Fame Banquet. The event, slated for Aug. 26, celebrates Arkansas’ outdoor culture and the people who have devoted their lives to preserving and enhancing the state’s water, woods and habitat for all.

The organization’s main annual fundraiser, the banquet attracts 1,600 attendees to the Statehouse Convention Center to salute the year’s inductees to the AGFF Arkansas Outdoor Hall of Fame. Proceeds go to AGFF programs and sup- port the work of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, of which the foundation is the fundraising adjunct.

“In 2012, I was asked to join the Game and Fish Foundation board, and shortly thereafter they asked me to join the foundation’s executive committee,” T.J. said. “That’s when I started to develop an appreciation for how the foundation works and what they do and all the various programs that they juggle and the financial requirements it takes to run an organization like that. That’s what led us to eventually agree to help chair the banquet.”

The organization is near and dear to the Lawhons’ hearts for the work that it does to educate and promote outdoor activities for youth, support game wardens and help fund the state’s nature centers, which welcome hundreds of thousands of visitors every year.

“One of the things I did when I was in college at Harding University, I was appointed to a position at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service at the Cache River Refuge in Little Dixie,” Mandy said. “I was around the game wardens, the federal officers, the conservationists that came through that organization, and it really helped me understand what conservation was and why we needed it. That became a big thing for me, and I wanted to share that with our kids.”

“With the family side of it, both Mandy and I have involved our kids in the outdoors early,” T.J. said. “We enjoy the same type of activities that I had experienced as a kid out on the water, lakes and rivers. Hunting is our primary passion; I took the kids hunting as early as they were willing to go with me in the mornings to hunt. We want to see that continue for the next generation of families all across Arkansas.”

In addition to inducting this year’s honorees — comprised of Jim Ronquest of Stuttgart; Tom Foti of Little Rock; Ronnie Ritter of Hot Springs; Bob Barringer of Little Rock; Dale Morrell and family of Alma; and Larry and Brenda Potterfield of Columbia, Mo. — the event offers food, networking and an extensive array of auction items that range from wildlife art to boats to exotic vacations.

“I think everyone is always really excited about the auctions that happen the night of,” Mandy said. “This year, Sissy’s Log Cabin will be our presenting sponsor, and we’re looking forward to some really exciting auction items that will be coming in. We’ve tried to add more items for the ladies; probably four years ago, I was like, ‘OK guys, we’ve got to do something to pull in more women.’ So, we’ve really tried to gather auction items that gear more towards them as well as stuff for the guys.

“There’s always great food, great fellowship. It’s just really fun to see people come together and get excited about the next few months that’ll be heading right into hunting season.”

Being called The Natural State isn’t just a random slogan, it’s a major component of the state’s brand identity. According to the 2023 AGFF Annual Report, outdoor recreation supports 96,000 jobs in Arkansas and generates $9 billion in annual economic benefit through consumer spending. Once overwhelmingly centered in hunting, fishing and camping, the economic model has shifted in recent years to include the rapid growth of non-consumptive activities such as mountain biking, hiking and paddling on the state’s waterways.

Even the pandemic didn’t slow the run to the outdoors much; if anything, it provided an escape from sheltering in place and allowed people to recreate while maintaining safe distance to curb the spread of COVID, which they did in droves.

Maintaining habitat, expanding land holdings and improving access to wild spaces has always been an expensive proposition for the commission, a state agency that can trace its roots back to 1915. As a function of state government, the commission is prohibited from asking for donations or directly raising funds to augment annual appropriations. This gave birth to the foundation in 1982 and today, the foundation not only supports the commission’s work, but also supports its own slate of programs targeting specific segments of the outdoor demographic.

“The primary focus of the foundation is on conservation and education for Arkansans,” T.J. said. “The various programs and opportunities the foundation supports are pretty diverse.”

Among these are the Arkansas Outdoor Society, an organization that helps connect young adults with outdoor activities and various youth programs that seek to lure the next generation away from screens and into the great outdoors. These include the statewide Archery in the Schools program, the Arkansas Game and Fish Foundation Shooting Sports Complex in Jacksonville, family and community fishing programs and maintaining the state’s nature centers.

Foundation leadership takes advantage of the captive audience at the banquet to detail the organization’s recent achievements and outline ongoing programmatic goals. This year, that message will lean heavily on AGFF’s Impact Fund, a fundraising vehicle by which donors can target their contributions to the aspects of the outdoors they love most.

“Giving to the Impact Fund helps support critical conservation programs and projects across Arkansas,” said Deke Whitbeck, AGFF president. “The foundation staff works with the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission to identify conservation initiatives and habitat projects that align with a donor’s passion. Donors have more input on how their money is used and more than that, they can see the impact their contribution has had.”

Whitbeck said another attractive feature of the Impact Fund is that the money used is often paired with matching programs that can double or even triple the original donation, thereby doing even more good. Eligible AGFC projects that utilize such money include restoring, conserving, managing and enhancing fish and wildlife habitat for game and nongame species; improving access to public land, rivers, streams and lakes; developing and enhancing recreational shooting ranges; acquiring land for public use; fish and wildlife research projects and species restoration and monitoring.

“The issue in approaching donors has always been trying to figure out, if someone wants to donate $100,000, how we can show them where their money is going and what we’re going to do with it?” Whitbeck said. “The Impact Fund is a way to provide transparency and accountability to see how the money is being used, specifically.

“Then on top of that we can say, ‘Would you be comfortable if we were able to leverage against U.S. Fish and Wildlife dollars or a private program and use your donation in a threeto-one match?’ And people get really excited about that; they think that’s awesome.”

For families such as the Lawhons, accessing the wilds are second nature. T.J. said the goals of the commission, supported in part by the AGFF, are for that to continue for future generations as well as expand opportunities to families who don’t have a generational link to the outdoors. He said the couple’s part in chairing the AGFF banquet is a small step in that noble crusade.

“I don’t know where I got this from, but I was told at one point that people go through phases in their life with their experiences outdoors, whether that’s hunting or whatever,” he said. “An early phase is it’s all about you, all about what you get to do and where you get to go. Then you transition into a quality or conservation mode where you want good experiences, and you want to leave things better than you found them.

“Then you get into the phase of how can I pass this along to somebody else? How can I see somebody else enjoy what I get to enjoy? I think that’s where we are, seeing someone else enjoy it as much as we do. We see our kids and we see the foundation at work and that helps drive us to participate and be involved.”