Perhaps someone with a skill for engraving can etch a fourth head and shoulders to Medical Associates of Vicksburg’s distinctive logo. 

They’ll need the additional artistry to go along with added medical expertise, new ownership and an “esprit de corps” its founding physician touts as great.

This week, the multispecialty clinic at 2080 South Frontage Road announced four doctors on its staff had purchased the business from previous owners, Community Health Systems Inc., and added Drs. Jeffrey Morris and Olatunji Oluwatade to its team.

“We’ll be able to get more doctors in here now,” said Dr. Paul W. Pierce III, whose practice was the first to move into the medical mini-mall in July 2008. “We have five internal medicine guys at the clinic, the four of us and Dr. Morris — which we really need in today’s world with these kinds of germs we have now.”

Pierce, along with his son, Dr. Samuel L. Pierce, Dr. Daniel P. Edney and Oluwatade are the new owners. Oluwatade, a native of Nigeria and board-certified internist and infectious disease specialist, spent more than three years at River Region Medical Center before working at Central Mississippi Medical Center for a stint before this week’s announcement. Morris, who practiced most recently in Hattiesburg, also brings a certification in internal medicine to the table.

CMMC had owned the clinic until its parent company, HMA, was bought out by CHS in 2014. A chance to be part of an independent operation again was key for Pierce, who had practiced 33 years at the former Vicksburg Clinic on North Frontage Road until moving into the South Frontage Road spot once home to Sack and Save grocery. Pierce and Edney had seen patients at River Region until opening anew.

“We just wanted to be independent again,” Pierce said, adding the transaction took about seven months to finalize. “When I came to Vicksburg, the Vicksburg Clinic was a private clinic. And we had ParkView hospital, Vicksburg Hospital and Kuhn Memorial. Then Triad combined Vicksburg (Clinic) and the Street Clinic, who had been competing with each other since the 1930s. Because of the two divided groups of doctors, we weren’t able to get sub-specialists in here. Once we came together, we had enough of a pool of doctors to get them to come here.”

Six months of the transition involved re-certifying the ownership to handle the higher number of insurers on the market as a result of the Affordable Care Act, Pierce said. The payoff to the process of paperwork should pay off for Pierce’s regulars in the form of added services to comprehensive family health care that already includes internal medicine, CT scans, X-rays, bone density scans, ultrasounds, pulmonary functions and more.

“We’re also going to have in the near future an acute care system similar to MEA for patients who have acute problems like flu, bronchitis or any acute problem,” Pierce said. “It’s about just getting them in quicker. A lot of emergency rooms are fast-track like that, and people are taken care of quickly.”

Pierce said CHS was “very helpful to us in making this transition.”

“Even we were going independent, once they realized that’s what we wanted to do, they were helpful to us,” he said.

Off-hours clinics on Thursday nights and Saturday mornings will continue — patients are seen until about 8:30 p.m. Thursdays and about 12:30 p.m. Saturdays, Pierce said. Extra hours are vital during flu season, Pierce said.

“We’ll diagnose flu in the lab in 10 or 15 minutes,” Pierce said.

Drs. Morris and Oluwatade will see patients in a wing of the clinic where ribeyes and T-bone steaks once were stored.

“This is where the freezers were,” office manager Debby Runnels said.

Runnels, who helped send 8,265 letters to patients for whom Pierce had records on file when the clinic opened, said the 67,000 square-foot space already home what she termed “the largest waiting room in Vicksburg” just may need a new sign.

A black marble plate bolted into the wall near the entrance depicts three heads with stethoscopes and the rest of the logo. A smaller marble sign displays the phone number and address.

“One of our patients designed this for us,” Runnels said.

Pierce and Runnels have a simple solution, but it will take a volunteer.

“We’ll just keep adding heads to it,” Pierce said.

Medical Associates operates at 2080 South Frontage Road alongside Battlefield Express Drugs and Compounding Center, Camellia Home Health and Hospice and Amedisys Home Health Services. The businesses operating in the stone-facade section of the former Sack and Save grocery are owned by the individual proprietors. Texas-based Citadel Vicksburg Ltd. owns the building itself.