2023 Economic Impact Awards 36-74 Years in Business: Citizens Memorial Hospital

Bringing more services and additional clinics to the communities Citizens Memorial Hospital serves has expanded the health care provider’s economic footprint.

Over the past few years, CMH has opened the Willard Medical Center and Walk-In Clinic and a rehabilitation clinic, a telepharmacy inside the Ozarks Community Health Center’s Urbana Clinic, the CMH Dermatology Clinic and Behavioral Health Transitional Clinic.

CEO and Executive Director Michael Calhoun says CMH is always looking for where patients around their communities still need access to care.

“We continue to look at places where patients have to go elsewhere for care, because we either don’t have the service or don’t have enough of the service,” he says. “We recruit physicians for those specialties. Once we bring those on and add new clinics, we’re able to continue to fulfill our mission to the community. The addition of those clinics has allowed us, one, to allow patients to get their health care more locally, which is what they desire to do. Of course, you can see the growth in revenue and in the patients served.”

In the last decade, CMH has grown its revenue by 113% to $628 million. But in growing clinics and services offered, the health system has also substantially grown in staff. CMH employees totaled 2,165 in 2022, with 1,403 of them employed at the hospital and another 762 employees at the Citizens Memorial Health Care Foundation.

Calhoun says CMH has focused its strategic plan around the recruitment of talent and retention.

“We’ve seen a lot of fruit from increased recruitment efforts,” he says. “We have partnerships with our nursing programs and that’s continued to develop and mature, where we have more nurses coming to CMH from Bolivar Technical College and Southwest Baptist University.”

CMH was the first business in Missouri to receive the state’s Recovery Friendly Workplace designation, giving individuals striving to stop the cycle of addiction a place to work.

A big part of CMH’s goal that not only impacts the economy but also its community outreach is giving back, Calhoun says. Much of that work is done through the CMH foundation.

The foundation raises funds for scholarships and runs the long-term health care facilities, home care services and pharmacy services. Calhoun says the hospital and foundation work “hand in hand” to better the community.

“The hospital has been really fortunate to have such great support from our community and people that give back to charitable causes,” he says. “The foundation’s pretty instrumental in being able to connect our community to our organization.”