Dr. Cam Patterson recently ended his fifth year as chancellor of the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. Those years have been anything but normal.

“At the beginning of 2020, I felt like most of the things we had set out to do initially had been accomplished,” Patterson says during lunch on the sprawling UAMS campus in Little Rock. “Our finances were better. We had strengthened our relationship with Arkansas Children’s Hospital. We could finally look ahead to where we needed to go during the next 10 years.” Then the pandemic struck. Patterson suddenly was consumed with getting enough personal protective equipment for his staff, preparing the hospital to treat a new class of patients, doing daily news briefings with the governor, correcting misinformation, and getting the vaccine out once it arrived.

“It was just one thing after another,” he says. “We were handling crises on a day-today basis. It’s a real credit to our team that we performed as well as we did. There was never a reduction in staff here. And I think having lived through the pandemic has prepared us to meet future challenges. I finally feel like we can do long-term planning again. It’s an exciting time as we’re opening two buildings on the Little Rock campus and breaking ground on yet another building in Springdale.” Patterson, a nationally recognized cardiologist, began work at UAMS on June 1, 2018. He came to Arkansas from Weill-Cornell Medicine and Komansky Children’s Hospital in New York, where he had been a senior vice president and chief operating officer since 2014. As a principal investigator or co-investigator, Patterson received more than $60 million in grants through the years from the National Institutes of Health, American Heart Association and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

UAMS, long an economic engine for the state, is becoming an even bigger presence as Arkansas’ population ages. It’s also being forced to deal with population shifts. A big part of that shift is the rapid growth of northwest Arkansas.

The 185,000-square-foot Northwest Arkansas Center for Orthopaedics and Sports Medicine at Springdale will be located between Arkansas Children’s Hospital Northwest and the Arkansas Blue Cross Blue Shield building in what’s known as the Care Corridor. Completion of the facility is expected in 2025. In March 2021, the University of Arkansas announced an agreement with UAMS to provide daily medical coverage for hundreds of Razorback athletes.

In September 2021, the UA Board of Trustees approved a $109.6 million bond issue to cover costs associated with the planned center near Interstate

49. The center will include areas for surgery, recovery and imaging. There will be a gym for physical therapy and injury recovery. The two-story building was designed by the world-renowned Marlon Blackwell Architects.

UAMS operates colleges of medicine, nursing, pharmacy, and health professions and public health along with a graduate school and a hospital. In addition to the main campus in Little Rock, there’s the northwest Arkansas regional campus in Fayetteville and a statewide network of regional clinics.

The seven institutes operated by UAMS are the Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute, Jackson T. Stephens Spine & Neurosciences Institute, Harvey & Bernice Jones Eye Institute, Psychiatric Research Institute, Donald W. Reynolds Institute on Aging, Translational Research Institute and the Institute for Digital Health & Innovation.

After lunch with Patterson, I tour new facilities on the Little Rock campus. One of those is The Orthopaedic & Spine Hospital (known as TOSH), which began serving patients last month. The four-story, 158,000-square-foot specialty hospital features lots of windows to let in natural light, landscaped gardens and works of art to make the patient experience more pleasant. Ground was broken on the $85 million facility during the pandemic in April 2021.

My tour guide is Dr. Lowry Barnes, the surgeon who now heads the UAMS Department of Orthopaedic Surgery. Barnes is recognized as one of the best knee and hip surgeons in the world, treating celebrity patients such as former Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Terry Bradshaw.

“This place is designed to be patient-focused,” Barnes says. “We even have natural light coming into operating rooms. You’re not going to find that in general surgery facilities. About 80 percent of those having hip and knee surgery these days go home the same day. We want to make them as comfortable as possible while they’re here. We’ll have a roof garden. The physical therapy section will have outdoor walking areas so patients can get outside on nice days.” We visit the lounge for providers. There are monitors for all operating rooms so everyone can see what’s going on. Because UAMS is an academic institution, there also are spacious areas for residents and fellows.

“We’re bringing everybody together in one place,” Barnes says. “This facility is going to change our culture at UAMS.” TOSH has 24 private patient rooms, 12 examination rooms for orthopedics, eight examination rooms for pain management, 12 operating rooms, faculty and administrative offices, and resident education space. TOSH is expected to draw patients from across the country.

Barnes, a Pine Bluff native, generally operates two days a week, sees patients all day Wednesday, and uses other days for administrative and leadership duties. When he became chairman in August 2014, the department was treating about 1,100 adult cases annually. That number is now above 7,000. Research output also has grown exponentially.

The next stop is the expanded UAMS Radiation Oncology Center, the home of Arkansas’ first proton center. The Radiation Oncology Center is part of the Rockefeller Cancer Institute. The three-story, 52,249-square-foot building is being constructed to host one of only about 40 proton centers in the country. The addition of the $65 million center is a key part of the institution’s pursuit of National Cancer Institute designation.

Proton therapy, an alternative to radiation therapy, uses a precisely focused high-energy beam to treat tumors without affecting surrounding tissues. Proton therapy is particularly effective in treating solid cancer tumors, including tumors of the brain, spine, head, neck, lung, prostate, colon and some breast tumors.

We’re joined by Dr. Michael Birrer, director of the Rockefeller Cancer Institute. The first floor has a consultation room, treatment rooms, clinical rooms, an exam area, staff lounge, conference room, physician offices and what’s known as a computerized tomography room. The proton machine is on the second floor along with gowning rooms, eight exam rooms and more physician offices. The third floor houses a cooling room for the proton machine along with mechanical and storage areas.

Last October, the proton center’s cyclotron, which is a particle accelerator, arrived. The 55-ton cyclotron, which powers the proton radiation beam, made an eight-week journey from Belgium. It was at sea for five weeks before arriving at the Port of Houston. The equipment required a police escort and a convoy of six trailers to make it Little Rock from Houston.

More than 50 percent of cancer patients need radiation therapy. Proton therapy destroys cancer cells using protons instead of photons, which are used in standard X-ray radiation. Protons are positively charged particles. Photons are high-energy X-rays. Both kill cancer cells or slow their growth by damaging cancer cell DNA.

Children as young as 1 year old have received proton therapy. Birrer estimates that 30 percent of patients will be children. Proton radiation drastically reduces the severity of side effects. Recovery times are shorter.

“For patients with tumors that are difficult to treat with conventional radiation, proton therapy could be life-changing,” Birrer says.

AMS hopes to receive NCI designation in 2024 or 2025. The process requires an almost 3,000-page application. Birrer, an oncologist who specializes in gynecological cancers, came to UAMS in 2019 from the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Comprehensive Cancer Center, an NCI-designated facility. He brought $4 million in peer-reviewed cancer research grants with him.

“Since my arrival in 2019, the Rockefeller Cancer Institute has recruited a record number of cancer researchers and, more recently, clinical oncologists,” Birrer says. “The clinical trials operation has been completely restructured, which we expect to result in a major expansion of the clinical trial portfolio and patient-offered trials.

“A community outreach and engagement program has been established to provide cancer prevention, screening and navigation throughout the state. This is critical to our moral imperative to provide the best cancer care for Arkansas residents.” UAMS is home to the only stem cell transplantation and cellular therapy programs in the state. Its myeloma center has became an international leader in the treatment of multiple myeloma and related blood cancers, attracting patients from around the world. Patterson says that high-tech advances such as the proton center “will provide first-rate care for more people as well as attract even more world-class doctors and researchers.” To receive NCI status, the Rockefeller Cancer Institute has had to increase the number of lab-based researchers, the number of patients undergoing clinical trials and the size of its medical oncology offerings.

“Having an NCI-designated cancer center will save lives by giving Arkansas cancer patients access to clinical trials and therapies not currently available in our state,” Patterson says. “NCI designation will also make prevention, screening, education, navigation and treatment programs more widespread.” Almost 70 percent of NCI funding goes to scientists at NCI-designated centers. In addition to additional state funds, the Rockefeller Cancer Institute is raising millions of dollars in private funds to achieve NCI status. In 2019, the Legislature created an account to deposit funds for NCI designation. Legislators approved a combination of taxes for the effort. UAMS officials then pledged to raise $30 million in private funds. There are 71 NCI-designated cancer centers in 36 states.

“My ability to recruit first-class researchers and clinicians will be much easier if we’re NCI designated,” Birrer says.

UAMS has about 3,200 students, more than 900 medical residents and fellows, and more than 11,000 employees, including 1,200 physicians. Patterson says UAMS sees patients from all 75 counties, most states and almost 50 countries each year.

“Studies have shown that patients do better if they receive care close to home, and we need to make sure that no one has to make the choice to leave the state of Arkansas to get optimal care,” Patterson says.

He believes NCI designation will create 600 jobs in the state and keep an additional $70 million in medical spending in Arkansas each year. As the nation moves away from the pandemic, Patterson says workforce remains a huge issue for UAMS, especially when it comes to hiring nurses.

“They’re the ones who bore the burdens of sick people during the pandemic,” he says. “It’s an incredible profession. I’m hopeful more Arkansans will realize that and go into nursing. We were down about 500 nurses at one point, meaning we had to use expensive contract nurses.” Patterson has been pleased to see funding for medical research grow nationally the past few years. As the population of the state shifts (53 of 75 counties lost population between the 2010 and 2020 census even though the state gained population as a whole), he says UAMS must consider alternative models for delivering health care to people in rural areas.

An avid trout fisher, Patterson has fallen in love with the state and believes overall growth will continue, putting pressure on UAMS to keep up with residents’ needs.