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E5Herald-Banner Saturday, MarcH 31, 2012

Hospital looking forward to growthcontinued from page e1

in Hunt County and we are, in compari-son to the rest of the state, more ill than the rest of the state in almost every area. I don’t know why, but we do know how to fix that going to your doctor, eat-ing right, exercise, and being a diligent health care provider. We hope in the future to promote more of the wellness habits and hopefully we’ll have some partners out in the community, and some funding potentially to do that.

Despite the tough financial times Hunt Regional has continued to improve by controlling costs and consolidating sites when necessary.

“We have survived, and we have even thrived in some arenas,” Carter said. “We have worked hard to manage our costs, while at the same time improving our quality performances, customer and employee satisfaction performances.”

Expanding the services Hunt Regional offers is the main strategy in remaining financially successful as an organization in the face of an unknown future in health care, according to Carter.

“As we implement regional services like cancer treatment, cardiac services next fall, rehabilitation services, and home health services, we are doing everything we can to enhance and enlarge our services,” he said. “If we didn’t, we probably wouldn’t survive. Our mission is to identify needs in the

community and try and develop strate-gies to meet those needs in a way that is financially feasible.”

Hunt Regional is also looking at replacing some of its older facilities.

“We are currently trying to evaluate our market in several areas, south, west, north,” Carter said. “The Commerce facility, Hunt Regional Community Hospital, is an aged facility and is at the end of life, so we’re trying to evaluate how we are going to replace that facility. That likely might be a bonding process which would require a community vote. Otherwise, there is ongoing need for facilities to accommo-date physicians’ offices throughout the county, especially in Greenville and in the west.”

Health care future and funding may be unsure, but as the population con-tinues to age, access to affordable health care will become more and more necessary.

“We’re positioned pretty good to meet the increased demand,” Carter said. “We have some excess capacity with the construction of the West Wing in 2008. Now that we are affiliated with Baylor, there is a financial advantage from a cost-containment perspective because we can purchase our supplies more cheaply, we have access to more records and we have an expanded referral system.”

caleB Slinkard / Herald-Banner

Hunt regional Healthcare President and ceO richard carter, who has been with the business for 16 years, works in his office across the street from the hospital.

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