Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your first question is from the line of Darren Lehrich with Deutsche Bank.
Darren Lehrich - Deutsche Bank
A few questions here; the first one, I was wondering if you could update us on your active medical staff and where you are at fiscal year end and where you were at the prior fiscal year end, I am just trying to gauge the activity on your medical staff, it sounds like you need to do some further development there, but I just wanted a square, where you are with medical staff versus the bed additions that you have?
Edwin French
It’s a market by market question. We’ve got a lot of stability in some of our markets with doctor groups that have been and are stable that are growing and performing nicely. We have others that have been around for a long time, they are mature with doctors that are developing other interests, they are still trying to bring in new partners, establishing new posts, new locations, and those disruptions obviously have a different bearing in that market. And we have of course the growth opportunities where we’re adding capacity. We’ve added in one hospital where we have a growth plan, in Louisiana, just this year six new primary care physicians, two cardiologists, and recruiting 11 more, and having discussions ongoing with a number of others so that when we open the hospital we will have other new services brought on. We recruited for that hospital over the last 18 to 20 months probably about 50 new physicians from the market as well as from outside, most of who are splitters. We have added in TexSan surgeons who have already started a bariatric program, and we’re expecting that to get off to a pretty aggressive start with 4 doctors in a major practice there, and we’re having conversations with a number of other specialties and have been about adding services. Some of the services we hope to add there would include neurosciences and orthopedics as well, and of course, Arkansas has added heart. The point I should make about this is that while we’ve announced and are embarking on a diversification strategy, until we opened Texsan’s new beds a couple of months ago, we still had the legacy heart hospital beds and the addition of Arkansas which are also heart hospital bed additions. So we’re just now really beginning to diversify capacity expansion, and that portents opportunities, and to bring in new doctors now, we have the capacity and the commitment to offer those services.
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