LUCY SCHULTZE

When Dr. Max Hutchinson looked back after 25 years of building a successful heart-surgery program in Tupelo, he decided to do something unexpected.

He started over.

Since relocating his practice to Corinth in October, Hutchinson has been embraced by the smaller city located just 50 miles north of his hometown. The medical community there is riding high after this fall’s debut of a new $47 million, 143,000-square-foot expansion at Magnolia Regional Health Center.

Among its investments: three operating rooms for open-heart, vascular and lung surgeries.

“All they needed was some expertise and personnel — key people to help make it go,” Hutchinson pointed out.

He was approached for the job about a year ago, shortly after the hospital was approved for a certificate of need for a heart-surgery program. That program had long been a dream for local cardiologist John Prather, who along with hospital CEO Rick Napper recruited Hutchinson.

“As we got to talking more about it, my wife and I considered that our family is pretty well grown and out of the house,” Hutchinson said. “We decided it might be a fun challenge to move up here and help them get this thing off to a good start.”

He also knew — having seen the struggles of other small heart-surgery programs around the state — that it would take special care to get the fledgling program over the initial hump and into a pattern of stability and growth.

The need was first discussed among Hutchinson’s practice group the Cardiothoracic Surgery Clinic of North Mississippi, based at North Mississippi Medical Center (NMMC). The group decided not to be affiliated with the new Corinth program, so Hutchinson broke off to pursue the opportunity on his own.

The choice harkens back to Hutchinson’s Tupelo venture, which he launched in 1981 with Dr. Roland “Butch” Guest, NMMC’s first cardiologist.

“We went from 130-something hearts that first year to peak at just over 1,000 hearts several years ago,” Hutchinson said of the Tupelo practice. Along the way, the program expanded to five cardiothoracic surgeons and 17 cardiologists.

“It’s grown to be a successful program,” he said. “Now we expect to duplicate that on a smaller scale.”

Already in place in Corinth is a team of three cardiologists, and a fourth has been recruited. Early next year, Hutchinson expects to be joined by Dr. Atiq Rehman, a cardiothoracic surgeon currently practicing at Baptist Memorial Hospital-Golden Triangle in Columbus.

Hutchinson himself moved to Corinth in late October after several months of traveling back and forth. That time was spent helping to recruit and train people and develop protocols and procedures for surgery.

He was set to perform Corinth’s first heart surgeries in November. Previously, most patients from Corinth have traveled to undergo surgery at hospitals in Tupelo, Memphis, Tenn., or Birmingham, Ala.

Although Hutchinson and his wife, Rosalyn, are getting settled in Corinth, they plan to keep their home in Tupelo as well.

“She will travel back and forth … she had been very supportive,” Hutchinson said of his wife. “She has enjoyed the experience of seeing the enthusiasm and reception we have gotten here — which has been really pretty incredible. The community is very excited about the prospects and the progress that their hospital has made in the last three years.”

The addition of a cardiothoracic-surgery program will have a positive impact on the entire medical community, Hutchinson believes.

“One of the reasons I was persuaded to come and do this is that I think it will have a beneficial effect on the care here throughout the hospital — not just in surgery,” he said.

As the program gets going, the plan is also to promote the vascular-surgery practice of general surgeon Phil Mathis, who is already in place in Corinth. When Rehman arrives, he will continue the progress that’s been made in vascular surgery and introduce newer endovascular procedures, Hutchinson said.

Compared to Corinth today, Tupelo and its hospital were larger at the time when Hutchinson launched its heart-surgery program. Still, he said, there are some similarities between the two communities.

“I don’t anticipate this program will ever be as large as the Tupelo program,” he admitted. “But clearly there are some similarities in terms of a large trade area in and around Corinth. There is a clear potential for growth.”

As a first step, the new surgical facilities recently added by the hospital boast state-of-the-art technology in terms of monitoring equipment, visual-imaging equipment and the integration of a new digital operating room, Hutchinson said.
But remarkable as all of this is, people remain the critical factor, he said.

“You can have a great facility — and they do — but all of that will not guarantee a successful program without having the key people in the key positions,” he said.

“In looking back 25 years ago, we had good people to help start that program. We have got every bit as competent and dedicated a staff — both in the critical-care unit and in the operating room and other parts of the hospital — here now as we did 25 years ago.

“It’s on par with any program I’ve had anything to do with, and I’m really excited about the quality of the people we have involved in this.”

Hutchinson is a 1969 graduate of Tulane University School of Medicine in New Orleans. He completed an internship at the University of Alabama-Birmingham, followed by a residency at the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta.

After practicing as a general surgeon in Tupelo for two years, he resumed training with a fellowship in cardiothoracic surgery at the Medical College of Georgia. He is board-certified by the American Board of Surgery and the American Board of Thoracic Surgery.

Outside of work, Hutchinson enjoys hunting, fishing and being outdoors. He and his wife have four children and nine grandchildren.



December 2007