Increased employee and customer satisfaction at River Region Medical Center are among this year’s key goals for Vance Reynolds, hospital’s newly hired chief administrator.

Vicksburg and Warren County’s anchor health-care company also must address an aging staff that will lead to turnover, Reynolds said.

“If the hospital was meeting expectations, I wouldn’t be here,” Reynolds told members of the Port City Kiwanis Club Thursday.

River Region Health System was created more than 10 years ago as the parent entity for several clinics and two hospitals that were created under many different owners. The company, now a subsidiary of Community Health Systems of Brentwood, Tenn., built River Region Medical Center as a single, consolidated hospital and has expanded it since.

While Reynolds didn’t quantify findings, he said results of recent patient satisfaction surveys, including those associated with the federal Healthy Community Access Program, show a need for improvement.

The program provides grants to public health departments and hospitals with a low-income use rate of 25 percent or more. Favorable answers on the survey result in more reimbursements by the federal government, Reynolds said.

“Without that knowledge, I can’t fix anything,” Reynolds said.  

As for its staffing, affected by physician departures and expanded use of contract personnel, recruitment of younger doctors and more specialists will also command Reynolds’ attention in his first year.

“We need to bring more family practitioners, intern-ists, general surgeons,” Reynolds said, adding 65 to 70 percent of River Region’s medical staff is 58 or older.

Reynolds, a Texas native, was hired from Chesterfield General Hospital in Cheraw, S.C., in December to replace former CEO Phillip Clendenin, who resigned in July. A new CEO was the most recent in a series of changes.

Contract physician teams have replaced staff cardiovascular surgeons and have largely replaced emergency room physicians. The Marian Hill chemical dependency unit will complete a move by midyear to River Region West on North Frontage Road. Vicksburg Clinic staff have moved from the West Campus into The Street Clinic and Physicians Practices of River Region, a complex of outpatient clinics in Vicksburg.

In July, Medical Associates of Vicksburg opened on South Frontage Road, creating a new option for certain types of medical services such as X-rays, CT scans and bone density services. Its staff includes at least three former River Region physicians and is headed by Vicksburg internist Dr. Paul Pierce III. Its parent is Jackson-based Central Mississippi Medical Center.

Reynolds took questions that dealt mostly with customer service and streamlining its business office, which he noted is run by a separate entity.

“We’ve got to improve communication with patients,” Reynolds said, extending the sentiment to employees of the facility. “We’ve got to say, ‘Thank you. I appreciate what you do. Is there anything we can do to serve you?”

River Region lists 1,600 employees, 372 licensed beds and 119 physicians with staff privileges.

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Contact Danny Barrett Jr. at dbarrett@vicksburgpost.com.