The new expansion signals start of a bold new chapter.
Dr. Marvin Fowler, 95, has seen it all in West Plains.
Dr. Stephen and Betty Coats have spent their adult lives serving others both professionally and personally.
The Stewart family literally helped build the foundation of the hospital and continue to support it through the recent expansion.
New digital 3D mammography technology has come to Ozarks Healthcare.
From Left: Dr. Stephen Coats, Betty Coats, and Dr. Marvin Fowler standing in front of the new expansion.
Photography by James Moore
Healthcare is an ever-evolving field – that’s why connecting the past with the future is so important. Our latest issue of Insight focuses on just this - connecting our roots as a small community hospital to our growth into a multispecialty regional health system that Ozarks Healthcare is today.
In this issue, we take a look at our hos pital’s beginning with the help of some of our first physicians to care for our commu nity. From delivering newborns to practic ing emergency medicine and being on-call 24/7 as a small-town physician, Dr. Marvin Fowler did it all as a doctor in our hospi tal’s early days. Dr. Stephen and Betty Coats share how they dedicated much of their lives to serving patients in our health sys tem’s beginning as a healthcare power cou ple – Betty worked as a nurse alongside her husband while raising a family and plant ing roots in our community.
Dr. Coats and Dr. Fowler’s perspective show the contrast in our healthcare sys tem’s size with our latest expansion proj ect. Featuring 100,000 square feet of new
medical space, our new Medical Office Building is now open and conveniently serving our patients with new added con venience of having multiple healthcare specialties in one place.
Our growth can be shown by more than added space – we have a strong group of new physicians who will be joining Ozarks Healthcare soon. Dr. Karen Jo hal, pediatrician, Dr. David Lish, podia trist, Dr, Caleb Piatt, orthopedist, and Dr. Ryan Vaisler, family practice physician are some of the latest caregivers to join Ozarks Healthcare.
Summer is often a season of setting a slower pace, but as I think you will see through this issue, life does not slow down across our health system. Still, through the improvements and changes made at Ozarks Healthcare, our focus remains the same – you and your health. As you read this issue, I think you will find it evident that this is still our constant.
I hope you enjoy seeing how Ozarks Healthcare’s history is just as important as our future through this issue.
TOM KELLER President and Chief Executive Officer Ozarks Healthcare
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Thomas Keller
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Executive Editor
Melody Hubbell Associate Editors
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Contributing Writers Dwain Hebda
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Melinda Lanigan
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Jason Masters and James Moore
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Ashlee Nobel
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SUMMER 2022 | INSIGHT | 5 A PUBLICATION OF VOLUME 812 N Kentucky St., West Plains, MO 65775 417-256-3133 | ozarkshealthcare.com
Ashlee Nobel is a graphic designer and illustrator with a background in publication design. After working her way up to Creative Director over two magazines in Little Rock, she set out on her own to freelance and focus on her art, creating Lee Lee Arts + Design. When she's not drawing or designing she enjoys gardening, biking and reading.
Dwain Hebda WRITER James Moore PHOTOGRAPHER
Dwain Hebda is a writer, editor and journalist whose work annually ap pears in more than 35 publications. A Nebraska native, he has an extensive resume spanning nearly 40 years in print. Hebda is also founder and president of YA!Mule Wordsmiths, an editorial services company in Little Rock, Arkansas. An empty-nest father of four, he and his wife, Darlene, enjoy travel and pampering their three lovely dogs.
James Moore is a photographer and filmmaker located in north central Arkansas. For over 20 years, he has used his talents in the marketing sector, creating content and building brands for local and national companies across a broad spectrum of industries. He has three amazing sons and a beautiful wife.
OZH CONTRIBUTORS
Melinda Lanigan is married with six daughters and is a Florida native. She has worked in the publishing industry since 1995 as a copy editor, writer, production director, and in project and distribution management. When she's not deconstructing sentences, she is singing and playing guitar and keyboard with her band, The Allie Cats, in Tallahassee, Florida. She also enjoys spending time with her fur baby rescues — three dogs, five cats and a horse named Maggie.
Jason Masters is a photographer from Austin, Texas who has now taken Arkansas as his home. He currently has a commercial photography studio in Little Rock and primarily shoots fashion, advertising and editorial portraiture for magazines within the U.S. and internationally. His photography can be found in such publications as Teen Vogue, Martha Stewart Living, Texas Monthly, The Knot and The Wall Street Journal, among many others.
PEDIATRICIAN
The roots of Dr. Karen Johal’s career can be traced back to her growing up in Manitoba amid her close-knit extended family.
“I grew up in a home where both of my grandparents were living in my parent’s house,” she said. “They had a lot of medical conditions; my grandma had Alzheimer’s for 10 or 15 years, and it was debilitating. My grandpa also got sick often. As the oldest, I was in the hospital a lot relaying information and all that. I think that’s where my love of medicine really started.”
Being the eldest of her siblings and cousins also pointed Johal toward a career working with children. While studying at the University of Manitoba, she finally discovered how to knit these various passions together.
“I always wanted to do something related to kids,” she said. “While I was attending the university, I also volunteered at the hospital there, and that opened my eyes to the health care side of things. I fell in love with it and decided to become a pediatrician.”
After completing medical school in the Cayman Islands, Johal completed specialized medical training in Chicago and Shreveport. She and her family arrive in West Plains in September.
It’s a long way from eastern Idaho to West Plains, Missouri. When asked what got him here, Dr. David Lish offers one word: family.
“My mother was a stay-at-home mom until I was about 12, and then she decided to become a medical assistant,” he said. “Helping her study for her classes kind of steered me toward medicine.
“Then, my brother-in-law is Dr. Tyler Rex Goodman, the other podiatrist at Ozarks. We’ve spent a lot of time visiting him there. I love the area. It’s beautiful.”
Lish is finishing up residency in Flint, Michigan. He completed his undergraduate studies at Idaho State University in Pocatello, Idaho, and podiatry school training at Samuel Merritt University in Oakland, California. He’ll arrive in Missouri this summer with his wife Sadie, an aesthetician, and the couple’s three children.
“My whole life, I’ve always aspired to live somewhere I can get out and have my space and not have my neighbors peeking in my window full time. The Ozarks can definitely give you that,” he said. “I’m excited to get my practice started and provide patients with the latest in minimally invasive foot and ankle surgery, plus limb salvage, and treating foot and ankle trauma.”
Long before he launched his medical career, Dr. Caleb Piatt was a standout football and baseball player, the latter as a Division 1 collegiate third baseman. His love for com petition also earned him an appreciation for orthopedic medicine which allows athletes to compete at the highest level.
“With sports injuries, musculoskeletal and orthopedics were always at the forefront of my thinking,” he said. “I always liked doing hands-on stuff, and to me, orthopedics has that while still practicing medicine and helping people.”
The St. Louis native graduated from Dallas Baptist University in Dallas, Texas, before heading to A.T. Still University in Kirksville, Missouri, for medical school. He served his orthopedic surgical residency at Grandview Medical Center in Dayton, Ohio.
“I love everything orthopedics, from the hands to the feet all the way up the shoulders and hips,” he said. “I wanted to be somewhere where I could treat the whole family as much as possible. To me, Ozarks Healthcare really seemed like a nice match that would allow me to care for every member of the family from an orthopedic standpoint.”
Piatt arrives in West Plains in July with his wife Amanda and four children, Tessa, Taggart, Graham and Gwendolyn.
Even before he makes the trip to Ozarks Healthcare, Canadian-born Dr. Ryan Vaisler has covered a lot of ground in his medical career. After completing his university degree outside his native Vancouver, he attended medical school in the Cayman Islands of the Caribbean, completed his clinical training in Florida and is wrapping up his residency at LSU in Baton Rouge.
But he says, West Plains offers something these other stops did not — the chance to practice in a small-town setting.
“I was looking for a smaller community where I can practice, grow and challenge my self and become part of a community,” he said. “It was very important to find a communi ty that was very accepting, had opportunities in the field of medicine where I can develop and had a great support system regarding medical infrastructure. That’s what I’ve found through Ozarks.”
Vaisler, 34, a family practice physician, lands in his new home in September and is accompanied by his wife, Dr. Karen Johal, a pediatrician who will also join the staff here.
“We are very happy with the opportunity to really grow our practice and start a family in West Plains as well,” he said.
I was looking for a smaller community where I can practice, grow and challenge myself and become part of a community.
- Dr. Ryan Vaisler
SUMMER 2022 | INSIGHT | 9 “
The first thing that happens as you walk through the front doors of Ozark Healthcare’s sparkling new expansion is the feel of your gaze pulled upward. Taking in the soaring reception area awash in light, your gaze meets the hyp notic hanging sculpture undulating above you. The abstract representation of the mountains and rivers for which the area is known sways gently by its tethers, recre ating magically the mountain breeze and gentle water.
But there’s something else that this impressive work of art brings to mind. Made up as it is of many smaller pieces, the mid-air mosaic also gives a subtle nod to the thousands of physicians, ad ministrators, medical providers and staff who have worked, practiced and led the
health system through the years. Not to mention the generations of people who, looking to the hospital as a center point of civic pride, offered countless volunteer hours and millions in donations, dream ing of a time when a building such as the 100,000-square-foot expansion would be come a reality.
“We wanted the atrium to reflect sym bolically what we feel like our place is in the Ozarks,” said Josh Reeves, Ozark Healthcare’s Vice President of Development. “The sculpture in the lob by shows what we feel as the healthcare provider of South-Central Missouri. It was very important for us to be able to produce this building in service to the community. Every time people walk in here, we want them to know it’s a special place.”
“Special” doesn’t begin to describe
the new medical building, created to bring multiple medical specialties under one roof and would be the envy of any health system of any size in the coun try. Everywhere you look along its wide, gleaming hallways, you see amenities to improve the patient experience: state-ofthe-art examination and treatment areas, efficient and friendly check-in and recep tion, comfortable waiting rooms, a coffee shop and a cafeteria.
Reeves, who’s spent a portion of every working day for the past two years over seeing the construction rise out of the ground, said even he is taken aback by the finished project.
“I was there on the original planning committee that hired the architect and did the master plan all the way through until we cut the ribbon. I’ve literally spent
hundreds, if not thousands of hours on this project,” he said.
“You go through the process like this and, rightly so, you have to be critical all the time of all the decisions that are made. Sometimes it’s not fun when you go through the process of building a building like this, but now that it’s fin ished and I can look back and reflect on it, we’ve done something very special for the community. There’s nothing like it in south-central Missouri or really any where in the Ozarks.”
The three-story building, which was ded icated in February, brings together multi ple specialties into various clinics. These include Ozarks Healthcare Endocrinology; Ear, Nose and Throat (ENT); General Surgery; Infectious Disease; Dermatology; Neurology; Rheumatology; Urology; Heart
“I came to West Plains in 1954 with the promise that the community was going to build a hospital. It’s just imperative for a community to grow and prosper to have good healthcare and good education. And we’ve got that in West Plains.”
- Dr. Fowler -
and Lung center; Orthopedics and Spine; Pain Management; and Podiatry. In addi tion, Ozarks Healthcare’s Imaging, Lab, Patient Financial Services and Registration departments are also located here.
“We’ve basically tried to concentrate the staff in a location that makes them readily accessible for patients, particularly those needing to access multiple specialties,” said Dr. Andy McGee, Cardiothoracic surgeon and Ozarks Healthcare’s Chief Medical Officer. “The facility itself is bet ter and more modern, both in the flow of patients from the parking lot all the way through to the provider and then back to wherever they need to go, whether it’s lab oratory, X-ray or another consult.
“The whole idea behind the mechan ics of the patient flow in and out is much more efficient, much more accessible, as
Now that it’s finished and I can look back and reflect on it, we’ve done something very special for the community. There’s nothing like it in southcentral Missouri or, really, anywhere in the Ozarks.Josh Reeves
VICE PRESIDENT OF DEVELOPMENT
well as having the majority of the provid ers located in one area. That also makes it easier for the providers if they need to do consultations with each other related to a patient, both in information or diagnostic studies and things of that nature.”
McGee, who’s been with the hospital for nine years, said one reason the new spaces work so well is that hospital administra tion went to great lengths to get feedback from physicians and staff on how to design the optimum experience. Medical person nel, in turn, solicited feedback from pa tients on what they’d like to see.
“Even before we decided we were going to do a medical office building, there were numerous inquiries to the public,” McGee said. “Patients would come to see us, and we’d send them queries and surveys. We’d also ask the public in general about what
they wanted from their hospital. We took that information, sat down and had mul tiple interdepartmental focus groups re view what patients said they wanted and needed.”
“Initially, we weren’t sure if we should upgrade the hospital or just upgrade the existing clinics. But working through the various physician groups, nursing groups and ancillary services groups, we all got together with the administration and eventually came to the same realization that we needed to have a central location with easy access for patients to get the care they needed. The product of that turned out to be the expansion.”
The $70 million project has not only redefined medical care in the region, but it completely changes the environment in which that care is administered local
“I wanted to give back to the community because my success in my work was due to all the people in this community. The way I wanted to give back was to make sure that this building was completed, and it is. It’s beautiful, and it’s going to help the community so much.”
- Marge Slayton -
ly, said Tom Keller, Ozarks Healthcare’s President and CEO.
“The buildings we had in the past were never truly indicative of the number and types of specialists, physicians and pro viders that we had here,” he said. “When I arrived here eight years ago, you couldn’t even see the hospital behind the trees and the houses. Well, that’s all gone now. Now, it actually looks like we have a med ical center.
“And it couldn’t have come online at a better time for us. One of the things that makes healthcare special is the relation ships you have with the people you work with. During the onset of the pandemic, that was limited; you might have worked with people in your department, but you didn’t have the opportunity to go down to a cafeteria and connect with other people
The facility itself is better and more modern, both in the flow of patients from the parking lot all the way through to the provider and then back to wherever they need to go, whether it’s laboratory, x-ray or another consult.
HEART SURGEON / CHIEF MEDICAL OFFICER
that you might talk to on the phone and that kind of thing. This brings back those opportunities to connect.”
The Ozarks Healthcare’s expansion is also the healthcare system’s boldest beacon yet for attracting and retaining medical talent. As the largest employer in the area, Ozarks Healthcare represents between 28 and 30 percent of the local economy. When one factors in the clinics spreading out nearly 50 miles in every di rection, the impact is even more massive.
Keller said while keeping staffed is a huge challenge overall (Ozarks Healthcare supports a payroll between $80 and $90 million), the new facility offers the hospital an advantage in re cruiting medical talent. West Plains has always rated high on the quality of life scale, and now the new facility will add a state-of-the-art workplace to match, the
This building now gives us a real advantage
... I think it will have a big impact on our ability to recruit and retain and attract people to West Plains and the surrounding area.
“ “
Tom Keller PRESIDENT AND CEO
importance of which cannot be overstat ed in the current labor market.
“Ozarks Healthcare is more than just a local hospital; we have a huge impact on the regional economy. As we grow, so do individual businesses, which have really been sputtering the last couple of years due to the pandemic,” he said.
“This building now gives us a real ad vantage. When we bring a physician into this space, it is as nice as you can find anywhere in the country — a beautiful space that’s also very functional. All of us want to work in a place like that. I think it will have a big impact on our ability to recruit, retain and attract people to West Plains and the surrounding area.”
Dr. Praveen Datar, a pulmonologist who 18 months ago was looking for the perfect place for his medical practice, agreed the new expansion gives Ozarks Healthcare a
big leg up in attracting staff. However, he said it had less to do with the eye candy of the place and more about giving physi cians the opportunity to do their best work through collaboration.
“It gives a more corporate look to the hospital, and obviously, it gives us fancy rooms, which is nice,” he said. “There’s good spacing, good aeration, good lighting for patients so that they’re not overcrowded. And that’s all important, but it’s not just about appealing to the senses. At the end of the day, you know, we’re judged on how much we’re doing for the patient. The other professionals, the doctors and staff mem bers and the services that we offer, make more of a difference than just a building.
“But what the design does do is it makes all of the physicians very accessible to one another. All of our offices are side by side, so it makes it easy to consult. Cardiology,
“It’s part of the whole fabric of the community — the economy, the life, the pride. It instills such a sense of wonder — a ‘Look what we’ve accomplished,’ feeling — over not just the last few years with recent additions and expansions, but in the history of the hospital. You think about what it’s meant to this community and so many families.”
- Courtney Beykirch -
even though we were in the same building previously, their offices were on one side of the building and ours were on the other side. It was very difficult to communicate; sometimes we’d have to text. Now, I just walk over to an adjacent room.”
For everything that’s new here, there is still in the medical office building plenty that lauds the past. A small chapel right off the lobby speaks to the faith of Ozarks Healthcare’s founders and the compas sionate care they strove to deliver. A few steps from there sits the cafeteria, Grill 59, so named in honor of the original West Plains Memorial Hospital constructed in 1959, a 50-bed operation that felt as daz zling and impressive at its opening as the new building does today.
And throughout, you find the resolute, pioneering spirit that launched Ozarks Healthcare and dared to dream big about the future, carried in the hearts, minds
and talents of the hundreds of people who work here.
“The hospital made a promise to the community that we would create some thing special,” Reeves said. “This wasn’t something in the beginning that was easy to convince the community to do because we had several challenges we had to over come. We had to completely close a city street. We also had to have a group of community lenders step up and write a large construction loan — seven or eight banks were involved in that. This wasn’t without risk.
“But we made that promise to the com munity, and I think the response so far is that we’ve really delivered on that. The way this place looks and feels represents what we think we’ve become as an orga nization. We’re not just a little rural hos pital with a few clinics anymore. We are a thriving healthcare system.”
What the design does do is it makes all of the physicians very accessible to one another. All of our offices are side-by-side, so it makes it easy to consult.
BY DWAIN HEBDA PHOTOGRAPHY BY JAMES MOORE AND COURTESY OF OZARKS HEALTHCARE
Into the soaring entrance of Ozarks Healthcare’s new expansion walks Dr. Marvin Fowler. He looks around at the gleaming walls and sparkling glass, then glances down the hallways as workers put the finishing touches on the massive expansion.
It’s a lot to take in, especially for someone who remembers being there at the begin ning, walking into the original hospital for the first time, a structure minuscule by com parison but not feeling that way at the time.
“I remember having a lot of pride when I walked into the hospital the first time. It seemed so new and clean, and we had a nice staff of people,” Fowler said, com fortably settled into one of the bright, airy conference rooms on the first floor.
“The hospital originally had a little emer gency room, and it had one psychiatric room that had a lock on the door. One oth er private room for infectious diseases, con tagion. That was the extent of the private rooms. The rest of them were two beds to a room and one four-bed suite — 50 beds.”
Dr. Marvin FowlerFowler is something of a living archive at Ozarks Healthcare, one of the originals who took medicine out of cramped down town quarters and brought it into the modern confines of a new hospital. That 50-bed structure cast the mold for all the things that would follow in West Plains, providing a spark for the health system’s current status as a regional medical draw and growing it into the biggest employer in the region.
And at the center of it then was Marvin Fowler – Arkansan by birth, Missourian by choice.
“I always wanted to go into medicine,” he said. “My father, T.P., was a family doc tor in Harrison, Arkansas, where I grew up. My brother Ross, who was 17 years older than me, was a family doctor there. And my Uncle Jim Fowler was a doctor there. As I grew, I was called ‘Little Doc.’
“My dad was 51 when I was born, and my mother was 46. Back in the late ’20s, during the Depression and all that, Dad wanted to get me educated because he had a feeling he wasn’t going to live to be old. In those days, you were old if you were 70. So, he started pushing me through school. I started college at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville at 16 and then graduated from the University of Arkansas School of Medicine when I was 23.”
Following a year’s internship and two years in the U.S. Army — 15 months of it in Korea — Fowler did a year of residency in
Louisiana and then set his sights toward home. He’d get close.
“I wanted to come back to the Ozarks but Harrison had plenty of doctors, so I looked across Missouri and Northwest Arkansas which, of course, was booming and had plenty of doctors. I settled on West Plains,” he said. “When I came here in ’54, there were four doctors. I was number five.”
Fowler set up a general practice and settled into the life of a small-town physi cian. Like all doctors in West Plains at the time, Fowler treated patients through the downtown Christa Hogan Hospital while city leaders dreamed of a more modern healthcare facility.
“It was a two-story brick building on East Main, originally a girls’ school,” he said. “Most of the babies at that time were delivered there. And they gave me staff privileges there, too, of course. But so much of our healthcare that was of any seriousness went to Springfield. We didn’t have ambulances then; the funeral home would use the hearse to deliver critically ill people to Springfield.”
Also in that era, many advancements in medicine were just around the corner, but they might as well have been on the moon in day-to-day rural Missouri.
“We had quite a bit of communicable diseases,” Fowler said. “A long time ago, we didn’t have antibiotics; we had sulfa drugs which were about the best thing we could do for impactions. But there was quite a
bit of pneumonia in the winter season. And we had tularemia, which is a tickborne disease. Had a lot of tonsillitis, and we used some sulfa drugs for that. When I came in ’54, I was getting to use penicillin shots, but that was just coming out and it was the extent of the antibiotics.
“We treated so many things then that you don’t see now. We had polio; the polio vaccine was just coming in during the mid to late ’50s, and I recall we were very eager to get all the kids vaccinated for polio.”
The construction of the new hospital was a landmark achievement for West Plains, one upon which Ozarks Healthcare continues to build its reputation. Fowler liked what he saw then, and now at 95, he likes what he sees today and knows what it means for the generations to come in the town he long ago adopted as his own.
“It makes me feel proud. Oh, proud,” he said. “I’ve always loved this commu nity. I enjoy interacting with the people in the community. I’ve said several times that I’ve never seen a board that I served on that I didn’t enjoy because that’s where you have community leaders.
“The progression of the hospital through the years has just been amazing. The pres ent administration has done such a good job of bringing in so many specialists. And the growth in the hospital seems like every decade we have another expansion. And this last one was just magnificent. They’ve really done such a wonderful job.”
Dr. Marvin Fowler has been here from the beginning of our health system’s founding in the 1950s. A servant of our community and health system, he’s also served the health needs of our country’s bravest on the frontlines. Dr. Fowler just turned 95 years old, and is still quick on his feet, just like these pictures show from our Fun Run back in 2019!Dr. Stephen and Betty Coats cracked the code on life’s meaning long ago, spending their adult lives serving oth ers both professionally and personally.
Both came from small towns where the ethos of hard work and looking out for one’s neighbor were instilled early. Both went into healthcare — he as a physician, she as a nurse — in the belief the highest calling was to ease another’s suffering. And both were tireless in their community service in support of their adopted hometown and those less fortunate than themselves.
Neither of them likes to take much credit
for all of that, preferring instead to be the other’s best and most steadfast cheerleader.
“My wife wears many hats,” Stephen said. “She’s an excellent cook. She’s a great moth er. She’s raised our children, and I can’t take much credit for that. I can’t say too many good things about my wife.”
“I want to add that he was a terrific fa ther and took care of his responsibilities,” Betty countered. “We had six children to raise and educate. I was only able to juggle family and a career because God gave me a lot of patience, and I had a lot of support from my husband.”
Stephen arrived in Missouri from his
native Ohio and attended medical school at Kirksville College of Osteopathic Medicine. Betty, who grew up in Troy, Missouri, com pleted her nurses training at Kirksville State Teachers College, now Truman University. The two were married, and after Stephen finished his residency, they made a beeline for West Plains, setting down roots that have held them resolute in good times and bad.
“When I came here, there were only about six physicians that were pretty much standard in the hospital,” Stephen said. “Now, I don’t know what the number is today, but it’s much, much greater. Maybe closer to 100.
“When I came here, it (Ozarks Healthcare) was about a 40-bed hospital, a glorified nursing home, really. And now it’s a major medical center for the region. They’re bringing people in from all over the country to work here, specialists and nurses. It’s amazing how much this place has grown.”
While admitting he wasn’t wired to sit on committees, Stephen lent his leader ship and guidance to that growth, serving several such bodies in his career.
“Every hospital has to have multiple committees, and I served on about all of them at one time or another,” he said.
“Committees were not my thing, howev er. They took up a lot of time, and with a busy office and busy surgery schedule and emergencies in the ER, committees were kind of a thorn in my side, frankly.”
Instead, the couple preferred devoting what scant spare time there was to mak ing a more immediate and tangible im pact on others.
“We have been on many mission trips through our church,” said Betty, an RN by training. “We’ve been to Guatemala, we’ve been to Jamaica three times, we’ve been to Mexico and Haiti. All of them were very interesting clinics. We took
“My biggest pride is all the patients I’ve taken care of who have done well. I have people come up to me who show me their scars.”
- Dr. Stephen Coats -Dr. Stephen and Betty Coats
care of thousands of patients.”
Back home, they were equally pas sionate about volunteering in various capacities.
“We’ve been volunteering with Whetstone Boys Ranch now for 10 years,” Stephen said. “It’s a religious ranch designed to turn young boys around. Now, we’re not talking about hardened criminals here; we’re talking about anger management, family problems, they don’t get along with their parents, they don’t do well in school. We try to teach them some of the basics of gardening. That’s been very satisfying.
“The Boy Scouts has been very satisfy ing as well. I was a High Adventure pro gram manager for quite a few years. We took the Boy Scouts all throughout the United States and Canada. Those were al ways great adventures.”
Betty and Stephen, now 79 and 82 re spectively, today live the life of retirees, tending fruit trees on their acreage and rev eling in their children and grandchildren. The hospital they served is flourishing, and the town they love is better for their being here — especially after they spearheaded the effort to get a full-time fire department established. It’s all gone so fast, yet every day brings the same measure of joy.
“My biggest pride is all the patients I’ve taken care of who have done well,” Stephen said. “I have people come up to me who show me their scars. We were donating our time to give COVID shots a while back and a woman comes up to me, pulls up her blouse and shows me this big scar from her gall bladder surgery I did back in the early ’70s. She said, ‘You remember that?’ I said, ‘No, not really.’”
They share a laugh, then Betty gets the last word.
“I’ve been very proud of this community and our hospital,” she said. “The hospital has always been very friendly and knowl edgeable and devoted extra pride in the care they give their patients. West Plains is a phenomenal place to live with all the work that’s been done in our community by our boards, our teaching staff, all those who volunteer and administer to our cit izens here. It gives you such a wonderful feeling to see all that. When people ask us where we’re from, we’re proud to say, ‘We’re from West Plains.’”
“Dr. and Mrs. Coats’ generosity has made our new physicians’ lounge and conference room possible. This much-needed space will allow physicians to have a place to collaborate, grab a bite to eat, work on charts, and more. The large conference room will be used for physician leadership and committee meetings.”
- Tom Keller -
“We are so very proud of this space and appreciative of their thoughtful gesture in giving back to provide a much needed space for our physicians.”
- Marge Slayton -
“Dr. Coats always did what needed to be done, he took care of the people in our community and has a great big heart.”
- Dr. Rob Martin -
“It really is an honor and a pleasure to have been a part of this hospital. I hope that all the doctors know how lucky they are to be a part of this hospital, administration and staff. My wife and I enjoyed raising our family here in West Plains. It is our pleasure to give something back.”
- Dr. Coats -
Marge Slayton; Dr. Stephen Coats; Betty Coats; and Tom Keller, President and CEO at the dedication of the Coats Lounge and Conference Room in 2016 where Dr. Stephen Coats was honored for his service to Ozarks Healthcare. He served on the active medical staff from 1975 to 2010.
Alton 417-778-7227
Gainesville 417-679-4613
Mammoth Spring 870-625-3228
Mountain Grove 417-926-6563
Mountain View 417-934-2273
Thayer 417-264-7136
Winona 573-325-4237
- Family Care 417-255-8645
- Internal Medicine 417-257-5989
- Pediatrics 417-257-7076
- West Plains Family Medicine 417-257-5911
- Zizzer Clinic 417-505-7123
You can forgive the Stewart family of West Plains if they are a little possessive of Ozarks Heathcare. The fam ily has had three generations of involve ment with the hospital ever since the foun dation was laid.
“When they began the construction of the hospital, I was the one that dug the first footings,” said Clyde Stewart, known around here as Junior. “I was the only one that had a machine to dig footings. We bought a backhoe to put on our farm tractor.
“Every phase or expansion that they had, I was involved, doing all their site work for them. In fact, throughout the years, every time they had an expansion, our company was always involved.”
Junior, who got into the excavation business working for his father Clyde Sr., passed that legacy down to his son Cary who was born at the West Plains Memorial Hospital (named 1959-1985). By the time Cary was a teenager, he was picking up the tools of his family’s trade. Today, as a third-generation owner, he can look around the Ozarks Healthcare campus and see the fruit of his family’s labors, past and present.
“I’ve worked there since I was 15 years old,” Cary said. “As part of the latest
expansion, we tore out part of the parking lot that I helped haul dirt in on when I was 18. We recently tore up a parking lot that I built probably 15 years ago.”
Cary sees the various expansions through the years as a reflection of West Plains it self. He said the health of the hospital par allels the health of the community, no pun intended.
“Ozarks Healthcare shows that West Plains is a community that should be able to continue to grow and survive,” he said. “Our focus is not necessarily on the hos pital as a family unit so much as it is our town. The hospital is an integral part of our town. If it weren’t for the hospital, we would have already gone the way of a lot of small communities and declined.
“The hospital is really more to me than just being proud of being part of some thing. It’s me being a part of my town and the fact that the hospital has facilitated the town’s growth.”
As if Cary and Junior haven’t applied enough Stewart family fingerprints on the place, Cary’s wife Melissa, a local attorney, joined the Ozarks Healthcare board eight years ago. Melissa doesn’t have the length of roots in the community that her hus band’s family does, but she’s no less proud of the hospital or any less committed to seeing it succeed.
“I see the hospital as an important pil lar in our community,” she said. “I’d served on the Chamber of Commerce, the library board and other things for a long time. This was the next step of helping where I could.
“I did it because I thought it was an im portant thing to do. It’s been fascinating, and I’ve found it very rewarding and inter esting. I’m glad I’ve done it.”
Just as Junior and Cary have construct ed the physical elements of the hospital, Melissa is proud to play a role in the stra tegic side of things. And on that front, she said the hospital’s future has never been brighter.
“One of the things I would want people to know is that as a board, we are looking to be the provider of choice for our com munity,” she said. “We’re looking at being the employer of choice for our communi ty. And we are looking at innovative ways that we can treat patients to keep people healthy.
“As a board member, I’m proud of the fact that we have leadership that’s open-minded rather than saying, ‘This is how we’ve always done it, so we’ll continue to do it that way.’ In today’s marketplace, an important dynamic to have in your overall leadership and your overall busi ness plan is the desire to evolve and learn.”
Today, the campus is dominated by the gleaming new medical office building, a spectacular structure that puts even the usu ally chatty Junior nearly at a loss for words. As one who can remember the days when healthcare was doled out from a small, pri vate space downtown, seeing where Ozarks Healthcare is today – in part due to his fam ily – is an awesome experience.
“It’s been almost overwhelming,
- Junior -
particularly with this last phase that we just finished,” he said. “Ten years ago, 15 years ago, you would not have ever com prehended what we have now. We’ve got our surgical unit, and we’ve got the on cologists there. There’s a broad base of doctors and specialists. We can do any thing that the big mega-hospitals can do because we are a mega-hospital now. And I’m proud to be a part of it.”
Front: Matthew Left to right in back: Lauren, Melissa, Cary, Natalie Front: Ruth Stewart, 106 years old Left to Right in back: Junior Stewart, Bonnie Hile, David Stewart“When they began the construction of the hospital, I was the one that dug the first footings. Every phase or expansion that they had, I was involved, doing all their site work for them.”
The neurological care at Ozarks Healthcare is noteworthy be cause several elements come together in ways you rarely see in hospitals this size — or almost any size for that matter.
“We have a small center, but it’s a center of excellence,” said Dr. Clara Applegate, the department’s neurologist who’s been in practice here for more than 30 years. “We had the first stroke team in southern Missouri, which we opened within a year of the publication of tPA as a treatment for stroke.
“We not only said we were going to be a Level II stroke center, which means being able to do everything including tPA for treatment of stroke, but once we did it, we’ve remained a Level II stroke center all these years.”
Applegate is used to the “small but mighty” tag; for the bulk of her career in West Plains, she’s been the only neurologist here, committed to treating people who might not otherwise have access to care.
“The No. 1 diagnosis here is migraines,” she said. “Alzheimer’s is probably 20 per cent of my practice. Epilepsy is a signifi cant part of my practice; I do adults and children. Parkinson’s and stroke are prob ably 10 to 15 percent each.”
In her work, Applegate is surround ed by a team of medical professionals, one of whom is Sharon Sowder, a speech language pathologist. With 35 years in her field and 16 working for Ozarks Healthcare, she’s another rarity in a hos pital this size.
“I have a wide variety in my caseload on a daily basis,” she said. “I see stroke patients, head and neck cancer patients, Parkinson’s patients, ALS. I also have a subset called augmentative commu nication where I evaluate patients for a speech-generating device. That’s new.”
Sowder has the most seniority among the department’s 15 therapists, but re gardless of tenure, the range of expertise on display here daily is broad. That, com bined with frequent collaboration with other specialists, helps patients get what they need all in one place.
“The collaboration is key, in my opinion, especially for a stroke patient where you’re coordinating with the physical therapists,
the occupational therapists, the discharge planners, the doctor, the nurse,” Sowder said. “Everything is coordinated to provide everything for that patient when they get ready to either go home or go to a nursing home. We’ve set that up for success once they leave our building.”
A fellow professional with whom Sowder frequently collaborates is Doug Dunbar, a physical therapist certified in LSVT Big, a treatment protocol focusing specifically on Parkinson’s patients.
“LSVT Big addresses mobility issues that you see in Parkinson’s patients, such as the typical shuffling gait, no arm swing and balance issues,” he said. “Parkinson’s is a progressive neurological disorder, and there is no known cure. However,
to Springfield or St. Louis or somewhere to get that expertise. We’re here to see pa tients at all levels and accommodate their needs in a timely manner.”
Integrating the work of the depart ment into the wider Ozarks Healthcare community is the job of Tracy Litchfield, stroke and STEMI coordinator. Her role, while typically less visible to patients, serves a critical function in the depart ment’s mission to promote stroke aware ness, inform other medical specialties and hold itself accountable to high-per formance standards.
“I spend a lot of my time collecting data, evaluating that, implementing edu cation for both our patients and our staff, whether that be patient discharge infor mation or education we can do to im prove things for our patients from a staff standpoint,” she said.
Bringing different specialists together, each with their own toolbox of treatment methods, means Ozarks Healthcare professionals can not only treat patients but educate families as well.
- Doug Dunbarsome of the symptoms can be controlled with medication, so the sooner we get the patient after diagnosis, the better.”
“Sharon (Sowder) and I treat a lot of the Parkinson’s patients together because Parkinson’s has a voice component as well.”
Dunbar said bringing different spe cialists together, each with their own toolbox of treatment methods, means Ozarks Healthcare professionals can not only treat patients but educate families as well. Being able to provide these ser vices through a small-town hospital is particularly meaningful, he said.
“We have a lot of clinics, and each has an LSVT-trained staff member there with the exception of one, and we’re working on getting that corrected,” he said. “We’re able to offer that service to eight or nine counties, so patients aren’t having to drive
“I also play a role in keeping other med ical personnel at the hospital up to date. We do annual online training and com plete competencies with staff members to make sure they understand how to treat an acute stroke patient, how to ad minister the medication, all those things.”
Litchfield, who’s been at Ozarks Healthcare for five years, stepped into this job last year. She said what she enjoys most is working in a team environment.
“People here want to work together for the good of our patients and the good of our communities,” she said. “I like that I get to see the process from beginning to end, whether I am directly at the bedside with a patient or just looking at it from a data-gathering standpoint.
“I get to see how they came in and ev erything that we do for them, and then get to see there was a good outcome. It’s nice to know I can evaluate data with the stroke team and be able to say this is what we’re doing well and this is an opportuni ty for improvement. I think that’s proba bly what I enjoy the most.”
Dr. Clara Applegate NEUROLOGIST
Sharon Sowder SPEECH LANGUAGE PATHOLOGIST
Doug Dunbar PHYSICAL THERAPIST
Tracy Litchfield STROKE AND STEMI COORDINATOR
The new expansion at Ozarks Healthcare is more than just fresh paint and coordinated exam rooms. It’s also home to new medical technology that improves outcomes and the patient experience.
Nowhere is that fact more evident than with the hospital’s new digital mammography equipment, which not only delivers a higher degree of detail, but it also allows women to complete this critical screen ing in less time and with less discomfort.
“Those mammograms are so important,” said Michelle Haney, patient navigator. “As we’ve reached out to remind women about their screenings, we tell them we have the 3D mammogram screening now and they’re really excited about it. They feel very re assured, very confident and they’re very happy that they don’t have to travel outside of West Plains to have access to that.”
The technology, which is fast becoming the in dustry standard, improves upon previous mammog raphy technology in several ways, starting with the complexity of the images.
“The easiest way to understand it is to think of your breast as a cake,” said Glenda Kentner, chief mammographer who's been with Ozarks Healthcare for 30 years. “With regular mammog raphy, you see a little spot, like a little area on the icing. What 3D does is it takes off that top layer of
icing and you can see under it. Then, if you need to look further, you can see under that. It goes in mil limeters and it goes all the way through the breast, taking one little layer off at a time.”
The new imaging technology is also more accu rate when reading denser breast tissue, as is typ ical in younger women. This is changing the de cades-old school of medical thought about who’s really at risk of breast cancer.
“We’re finding cancer in women younger and younger,” said Laurie Birchfield, Imaging Director. “I think that’s the biggest impact I’ve seen, and I’ve been dealing with 3D mammography for probably the last eight years. With younger women, you can’t always feel those knots until we get them on the 3D. With this technology, we can see through the dense tissue that we couldn’t see with digital mammography on its own, so we’re picking it up sooner, which is better.”
The new technology also performs its task in a way that’s less stressful on the patient, Kentner said.
“Everything that we do is more advanced,” she said. “We usually do two projections per picture, which the ladies seem to find very easy to do. Before, we had some say, ‘I just can’t hold my breath and stay still that long.’ As of yet, we’ve not had that problem while getting these images.”
The two digital mammography units also feature
WITH THIS TECHNOLOGY, WE CAN SEE THROUGH THE DENSE TISSUE THAT WE COULDN’T SEE WITH DIGITAL MAMMOGRAPHY ON ITS OWN, SO WE’RE PICKING IT UP SOONER, WHICH IS BETTER.”
- Laurie Birchfield, imaging director
“Glenda Kentner, chief mammographer, screens a patient using Ozarks Healthcare's new 3D mammogram technology.
Smart Curve design, which makes the screening process more comfortable.
“Smart Curve is more focused on the paddles,” said Birchfield. “At one time many years ago, pad dles were very, very square. Smart Curve focuses on a new curved paddle design that forms a little bit more to the breast tissue. This is something that re ally helps the patient’s comfort.”
The new technology, which was put into service in early March, is already garnering rave reviews from patients and healthcare workers alike. And that’s good news considering the backlog of screen ings the hospital is still dealing with created by the pandemic.
“I think if we can take something positive out of COVID, it raised awareness of people’s health,” Haney said. “A lot of people passed these types of things off as not being serious until, all of a sudden, they see how the littlest thing can turn into a big thing. Everyone knows somebody who has been affected by cancer. And here, we’re a
tightknit community, so a lot of our patients who do have cancer, we know them and we have co workers that know them. It’s like part of our fam ily getting sick.”
The next chapter for the 3D mammography is already in the works, as Ozarks Healthcare plans to christen a mobile mammography unit this fall, bringing the imaging technology to even more pa tients throughout the hospital’s service area.
“We want to see an increase in the healthy life style of all of the women in our community,” Haney said. “With every conversation we have, we make it personal because these are our neighbors. These are people that we see in the grocery store every day. This is personal.
“We try to express the importance of the test. We tell women all the time, if you’re not going to get screened for yourself, then do it for your grand daughter, do it for your sister, do it for your cousin, your mother. Give them peace of mind. We are very focused on generational growth and education.”
Above (from left): Jackie Nevels, Sherri Bay, Glenda Kentner, Laurie Birchfield, Monica Oaks, Robyn Sims, and Michelle Haney.“IF YOU’RE NOT GOING TO GET SCREENED FOR YOURSELF, THEN DO IT FOR YOUR GRANDDAUGHTER, DO IT FOR YOUR SISTER, DO IT FOR YOUR COUSIN, YOUR MOTHER. GIVE THEM PEACE OF MIND.
- Michelle Haney, patient navigator
Barry and I donated to the Cancer Treatement Center, of course, never thinking we would have to use it.
“ ”OZH FOUNDATION Barry and Marge Slayton
People often ask Barry and Marge Slayton why they’ve been so invested in Ozarks Healthcare through the years. Marge has served on the hospital board, and the couple are regulars at fundraising events, digging into their own pockets in support of the hospital’s work.
Every time such questions come up, Marge has a ready answer — the cause is personal.
“My sister and her husband moved to West Plains, and she took a job over at the hospital in the physical therapy department,” Marge said. “She was very involved, loved peo ple and loved what she did and people loved her. She was here only for a few years before she died in 2002, but she made such an impact with all of the people at that hospital.
“And what really did it for me was seeing how com passionate they were toward her in return. When you have cancer, it’s tough. She did chemo. She did radia tion. She had surgery. It was just amazing the number of people that helped her; I could name lots of different situations where people were so kind to her from the hospital. After that I thought, ‘They were so good to my sister, I want to give back.’”
What started as simple financial support turned into Marge being moved to join the hospital’s board of di rectors. During the course of 12 years, five of them as chairman, a capital campaign launched that resulted in the expansion of the hospital’s Cancer Treatment Center. Given her sister’s story, that project would have been in tensely personal for Marge anyway, but with what had come after that, it was even more so.
“Barry and I donated to the Cancer Treatment Center, of course, never thinking we would have to use it,” Marge said. “In 2013, Barry retires, I was getting ready to retire in 2015. Well, he came down with cancer. We never thought we’d need that facility the way we did. You just never know how things are going to work out.”
“I actually took my chemo and my radiation there,” said Barry who battled breast cancer. “I was over there pretty regular for about a year.”
Barry’s treatments, which ended shortly before the new
BY JASON MASTERSCancer Treatment Center was completed, drove home the imperative of providing a better experience for cancer patients.
“Being in there and taking chemo, we’re sitting closer than you and I are sitting,” he said. “No privacy. You just kind of visited with people. You could tell that the place re ally needed an upgrade. After experiencing that, it was easy to get behind it financially, especially knowing not everyone could donate in the way we’ve been blessed enough to.”
For Marge, having a spouse in cancer treatment gave her yet another perspective of the hospital’s operations, one that informed her leadership of the board. To this day, even though Barry has a clean bill of health and her board term has ended, the memory of that time pushes her to increase donations to the hospital, whenever given the chance. Everyone has something to give, she says, and it all counts.
“There are many ways people can contribute,” she said. “I personally know of people who could not write a check, but they give of their time. They volunteer at the hospital, or they help in some small way to raise money. The differ ent events that the Foundation has, they’ll purchase things off the auction. Now, that’s just a small amount, but maybe that’s all they can do. It still helps.”
Marge said among the myriad ways people can partici pate in the mission of the hospital is planned giving, which is leaving money, stocks or property in one’s will to a group or organization. Planned giving is easy to set up and en sures a person’s assets are distributed according to their wishes after their death.
“It’s really important for everybody to understand how important the healthcare system is to this area,” Marge said. “Sickness is a bad thing, and it’s nice to have a beau tiful facility, dedicated, knowledgeable doctors and nurs es and a caring staff and administration. Donations help make that happen. Giving to the hospital is giving back to the community.”
For more information about planned giving or other ways to support the mission of the hospital, please contact the Ozarks Healthcare Foundation at (417) 853-5200.
Every time Sarah James finds herself in the shiny-new Employee Wellness Center at Ozarks Healthcare — which is often — it does her heart good knowing the one-year-old workout facility is doing the same (literally) for the company’s many employees.
“The last two years, for everybody, have been ex tremely stressful,” she said. “I think a lot of people lost some control over their lives when we were all limited in what we could do and where we could go.
“Everybody knows exercise is just awesome, not only for weight loss and diabetes and heart care, but it’s important for your mental health as well as your mood and energy. We all need to connect to something, and this kind of gave our cowork ers something healthy to cling to and process what was going on.”
The center, which opened last May, is the first offering of its kind by the healthcare system, repur posing some extra square footage into a 24/7 work out space that’s free to employees. It’s also available
to employee spouses for a small monthly fee, ev ery penny of which is given directly to the Ozarks Healthcare Foundation to help purchase a mobile mammography unit.
James, whose day job is as director of Ozarks Healthcare’s Therapies Department, said once the center opened, it didn’t take long to start at tracting a steady clientele of both regular workout junkies and beginners alike, creating new friend ships among employees.
“It was cool to see people who never had been to the gym before, who thought, ‘Well, I might as well try it out,’” she said. “You saw groups of people who didn’t normally know each other form friendships as they were going to the gym together. It was really a
Opposite Page: Sarah James, the director of Ozarks Healthcare Therapies Department. Photography by Jason Masters.
The center, which opened last May, is the first offering of its kind by the hospital, repurposing some extra square footage into a 24/7 workout space that’s free to employees.
bonding thing, which was fun to see.”
Kat Wynn, a physical therapy assistant, doubles as a physical trainer for the new workout facility, having completed certification through ISSA.
“I think it’s great,” she said of the gym. “When I first started working here, the hospital had a con tract with one of the local gyms, and all hospital employees got a free membership there. Then, when that gym switched hands, they didn’t renew the contract for whatever reason.”
“I think as a hospital we should practice what we preach. We even have shirts that say, ‘Focused on Your Health,’ but if you’re not taking care of yourself, then how well can you actually take care of your patients? The fact that we have equipment
to use again, and it’s pretty much on campus, I think is wonderful.”
Wynn is one of two employees who lead training classes at the new workout facility. She and fellow employee Theresa Speake also meet with people who reach out to them, usually beginners who don’t yet know their way around the equipment.
“We have a coworkers Facebook page, and we’ve posted on there if you have any questions or are looking for pointers, we can meet you there to show you around,” she said. “Or, if they feel more com fortable with one of us being there for a workout to direct them along the way, we can do that, too.
“The main thing we want people to know is the point is to just promote being healthier overall. It’s
Above: Kat Wynn, is physical therapy assistant as well as a physical trainer for the new workout facility, leading training classes. Photography by Jason Masters.I think as a hospital we should practice what we preach. ... but if you’re not taking care of yourself, then how well can you actually take care of your patients?
- Kat Wynn
38 | OZARKS HEALTHCARE | SUMMER 2022 “ ”
not saying that you have to turn into a weightlifting champ; just go over and walk on the treadmill on your lunch break. Promoting any sort of movement, I think, is a really good thing.”
The team plans to begin sponsoring differ ent events for weight loss, which would combine healthy habits with good-natured competition among departments, and also hopes to fill out exist ing class slots. Speake said whatever sparks people’s interest in exercise, they should follow it to create a healthier lifestyle.
“Exercise helps stimulate blood flow, which im proves joint health, plus you’ve got all the chemi cal effects that are happening in the brain, your endorphins,” she said. “As we get older, exercise is
also important so that you don’t lose muscle mass, which over time, creates more wear and tear on joints. Nurses, especially, and CNAs and therapists are on their feet a lot, they do a lot of lifting and they work long hours. Strength is very important to do those things.”
Speake, who’s worked as a physical therapist at Ozarks Healthcare for 31 years, said the addition of the gym is one of the best things the healthcare system has done for its employees.
“Healthcare is a stressful profession,” she said. “When you get off work, you’re tired, but you can still exercise when you’re tired. Having this facil ity right here and available makes that easy. It’s just terrific.”
Above: Theresa Speake, a physical therapist, also leads training classes and will meet up with people to show them around the gym.
Photography by James Moore.
The team plans to begin sponsoring different events for weight loss, which would combine healthy habits with goodnatured competition
In conversation, Myriah Wallace comes off as a perenni ally cheerful person whose voice chirps with optimism. But underneath the sunny, caring disposition, one can also detect the steely tones of a woman with a cause she is deter mined to conquer.
Wallace, along with her team of professionals at the Ozarks Healthcare Behavioral Health Center, is out to serve the many peo ple suffering with behavioral health issues, showing them the kind of compassionate care that improves their quality of life.
“Over the past five years, the stig ma for mental health issues has re ally decreased,” she said. “People are not worried about being seen for treatment of their mental health.”
Wallace said the cumulative ef fect of recent national issues has been a major accelerant of this trend. From the presidential election to the COVID-19 pandemic to the recent turmoil in Europe, anxiety over global events has only stirred the pot on mental health issues locally.
“Our area has a huge population dealing with trauma, abuse, ne glect and it’s really, really high here compared to other parts of the U.S.,” she said.
The Behavioral Health Center, of which Wallace has been man ager for three of her six years in West Plains, has worked to keep up with the level of need in the community with new programs and outreach to reach as many people as possible.
“I oversee four departments at our regional crisis office where we answer calls for seven counties,” she said. “We’ve got the Emergency Room Enhancement Program that diverts patients who are high need, helping them avoid constant ER admissions. We’ve got Community Behavior Health Liaisons who work with law enforce ment to teach them about how to recognize individuals who might need treatment instead of incarceration. And then we’ve got out patient therapists at the different clinics — Mountain Grove, West Plains, Thayer, Gainesville — as well as all our school-based sites.”
Each step the center makes — such as adding a residential pro gram, integrated treatments for co-occurring disorders, ER en hancements and several new school-based sites — only loosens an other brick in the dam of pent-up demand. Meaning, Wallace and staff constantly have their hands full.
Not the least of the center’s concerns is the mental health of Ozarks Healthcare employees, especially given the stress of life during a pandemic. Wallace and her team always find time to care for caregivers, helping them order their feelings. Even in a life and death business, perspective can be brought to bear with practice and help.
“Things get out of our control sometimes; it’s inevitable. I think a lot of people jump to conclusions. It’s just human nature to prepare for the worst. As we like to tell people, ‘Don’t make the situation a catastrophe.’ We’re not fortunetellers. We can’t predict the future. Things rarely turn out as badly as we think they will. Our goal is to help providers learn to cope and deal with things so that they can, in turn, provide care for patients.”
As for general advice on coping with stress, Wallace says there are some simple mental exercises that can help in most situations.
“Any change in life, regardless if it is bad stress, good stress, positive, negative, whatever, still uses the same type of hormones and still has that same effect on your body,” she said. “Planning a wedding, a good thing, or losing a job, a bad thing, is exhausting either way. It produces the same hormones, and you’re focused on the event for a long period of time.
“We advise people to address problems, no matter how big or how small. Sometimes it’s as simple as asking yourself, ‘Will this matter in one year, or will this matter in five years?’ There are also all kinds of hotlines that anybody can use to talk to an anonymous professional.
Here at our clinic, we have an oncall therapist that’s available Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sometimes we do respond to somebody in a suicidal crisis. We’re also there for somebody who just needs to chat.”
Any change in life, regardless if it is bad stress, good stress ... still uses the same type of hormones and still has that same effect on your body.
“
40 | OZARKS HEALTHCARE | SUMMER 2022 OZH MENTAL HEALTH Myriah Wallace, Behavioral Health Center manager
