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Charity Elmer, senior vice president and general counsel; Ron Prenger, vice president and chief clinical officer; Jake McWay, CFO; and Steve Edwards, CEO
Charity Elmer, senior vice president and general counsel; Ron Prenger, vice president and chief clinical officer; Jake McWay, CFO; and Steve Edwards, CEO

2016 Economic Impact Awards 16-29 Years in Operation 30+ Years in Operation Winner: CoxHealth

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Being an economic driver isn’t part of CoxHealth’s mission statement, but in keeping southwest Missouri healthy it sometimes is a direct result.

CEO Steve Edwards says it’s all tied to the health care system’s own growth, whether through expanding its coverage area or the facilities and technology needed to assist a growing population across more than 80 clinics in 24 counties.

In the last two years, CoxHealth has undertaken significant renovation and new construction with Cox Medical Center Branson, Cox Monett’s emergency room and Cox South’s West Tower. The health care system posted 2015 revenue of $1.27 billion.

“One is just the construction – the job creation involved with creating those giant buildings,” Edwards says of CoxHealth’s economic impact, noting 94 percent of the workforce involved in recent projects comes from within a 50-mile radius of Springfield.

“Maybe in part it’s because we have a local board, but it’s important to them that we dedicate as much of our resource to local business and talent.”

Growth in Branson, he says, was especially needed from a health care perspective. The 2014 expansion has helped the hospital maintain a higher proportion of elective surgeries and increase the bed capacity to handle more inpatients – a number Edwards says can inflate as much as 50 percent in the summer travel season. And there’s still one floor left for future growth.

“Before the Branson hospital joined us, more than 50 percent of the population left Stone and Taney counties to get care,” Edwards says.

“That number has now flipped.”

The expansions in Branson and Springfield also are moving CoxHealth closer toward an all-private bed model, something Edwards says addresses patient satisfaction alongside safety and infection issues.

Also on the horizon? Telemedicine, or as Edwards analogizes, the Uber of health care. CoxHealth’s DirectConnect system queues patients in a virtual waiting room and allows a nurse practitioner to examine patients remotely from laptops or tablets, using cameras with better amplification abilities than the human eye. Edwards says school districts, particularly those in rural areas, are catching on to the idea as a method for treating employees without the associated expenses of lost days and scheduling substitutes.

Edwards says the health care system’s community involvement stems directly from a desire among employees to do more outside the walls of CoxHealth. Staff in medical detox clinics, for example, on their own began working with organizations like Rare Breed to address prevalent issues with alcohol and opioid abuse.

Similar efforts can be seen in this year’s regional diaper drive, where Edwards estimated 25,000 of some 27,000 diapers collected came from CoxHealth’s employees. The health care system also participates in a Charity of the Month program, helping area nonprofits such as Convoy of Hope and Camp Barnabas.

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