JANUARY 2015

Conway-based mediCal supply Company provides award-winning serviCe to southern u.s.

Page 4D

Preferred Medical: Customer Focused, Service Oriented

Faulkner County Business Journal To subscribe call (501) 329-2927 • Log Cabin Democrat2D — Sunday, January 18, 2015

With close to 1,000 business and community leaders in attendance each year, Annual Meeting is the larg-est business event in Conway.

The 2015 event, organized by the Conway Area Chamber of Commerce, is scheduled for March 19 at the Universi-ty of Central Arkansas’ HPER Center. Tickets and sponsorships are available now.

An awards ceremony recognizing individuals and businesses that have made a difference in Conway over the past year is one of the highlights of An-nual Meeting. The Conway Area Cham-ber is accepting nominations for the fol-lowing categories:

The Distinguished Service Award is the Chamber’s highest form of recog-

nition. Established in 1957, this award is presented annually to an individual or group who has rendered special ser-vice for the benefit of the community. Candidates have demonstrated an ac-tive leadership role for the betterment of the community through their in-volvement in business, civic and social service organizations.

Established in 1973, the Good Neighbor Award is presented annual-ly to an individual who has given of his or her time and talents. Candidates are known for going beyond the call of duty to help others. The nominee shall exem-plify outstanding public service to the Conway area.

The Business of the Year Award recognizes businesses for their contin-ued growth, innovation and community involvement. It is the premier honor to

the best overall business in Conway and is presented in five categories based on industry and number of employees.

The Business Executive of the Year Award recognizes the owner, ex-ecutive or president of a business who has displayed outstanding performance in either an individual or collabora-tive endeavor. The nominee is a driving force behind the company and works to maintain an enriched business climate and an enhanced quality of life in Con-way.

The Young Business Leader Award recognizes a community busi-ness leader, age 40 or younger, who has helped create a more vibrant business and social environment for all of Con-way’s residents.

With the exception of the Distin-guished Service and Good Neighbor

awards, nominees must be members of the Conway Area Chamber of Com-merce or work for a Chamber-member business.

Visit ConwayChamber.org to access to online nominations site. Those sub-mitting nominations are encouraged to address specific examples of each nom-inee’s leadership, community service, personal and professional impact, work/life balance, perseverance, ethics, and success.

A panel of Chamber executives out-side the state of Arkansas will select the award recipients. The deadline to submit nominations is Friday, Jan. 30.

Individual tickets are $75, and tables and sponsorships begin at $600. Re-serve a space by contacting Mary Mar-garet Satterfield at Mary@ConwayAr-kansas.org or 501-932-5412.

Chamber’s 2015 Annual Meeting set for MarchNomiNatioNs opeN for awards; tickets, spoNsorships available

Beth McCullough, marketing coordinator at Conway Corpora-tion, received the IOM recognition from Institute for Organization Management, a four-year profes-sional development program of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foun-dation.

As a graduate of Institute, Mc-Cullough has completed 96 hours of course instruction in nonprofit management.

“I’m proud to work for a compa-ny that provides quality, reliable services for our customers and rec-ognizes the value of personal and professional development for its employees,” McCullough said. “In-stitute provides one of the most comprehensive workforce develop-ment curricula available in an ev-

er-changing business climate and motivates me to dream big for our company and our community.”

Through a combination of re-quired courses and electives in ar-eas such as leadership, advocacy, marketing, finance and member-ship, Institute participants are able to enhance their own organi-zational management skills and add new fuel to their organiza-tions, making them run more effi-ciently and effectively.

“The lessons and information I’ve received during my four years will help me as Conway Corpora-tion works to increase its Reliable

Public Power Provider designation as well as continue our culture of providing innovative and forward-thinking cable, Internet and tele-phone service to our friends and neighbors,” she said.

Crystal Kemp, Conway Corpo-ration’s manager of marketing and public relations, said McCullough is a valuable and dedicated part of the company’s marketing team.

“Beth’s dedication to complet-ing her IOM requirements demon-strate the same kind of dedication and enthusiasm she brings to serv-ing our customers and our compa-ny,” Kemp said.

For more information about In-stitute for Organization Manage-ment, visit Institute.USChamber.com.

Conway Corporation marketing coordinator earns IOM recognition

Beth McCullough, IOM

Faulkner County Business Journal Sunday, January 18, 2015 — 3D Log Cabin Democrat • Find our online edition at www.thecabin.net

Each year, the Conway Area Chamber of Commerce acknowledges its top investors through a “Chairman’s Circle” designation. Members of the Chairman’s Circle underwrite the economic development, education and government affairs initiatives of the Chamber, Con-way Development Corporation and Conway Down-town Partnership.

“The level of community building and economic de-velopment work we do is not sustainable on a member-ship dues model,” said president and CEO Brad Lacy. “In order to lay the groundwork for business recruit-ment, new initiatives and site development, greater investments are necessary. Each year, more and more companies invest at a higher level to help us under-write major projects and initiatives. We couldn’t oper-ate without them.”

In 2014, 46 Chamber-member businesses achieved the designation, compared to 43 members in 2013 and 35 members in 2012. Total investment increased by more than $57,000 since 2013.

The following businesses achieved Chairman’s Cir-cle status in 2014:

Diamond:• Conway Advertising & Promotion Commission and City of Conway; and Conway Corporation. Platinum:• Crain Buick GMC and Crain Kia; and Southwestern Energy Company. Gold:• Acxiom Corporation; Centennial Bank; Conway Regional Health System; Crafton Tull; First Security Bank and Crews & Associates; First Service Bank; Regions Bank; Universi-ty of Central Arkansas Foundation; and Virco Manufacturing Corporation. Silver:• Arvest Bank; Central Baptist College; Conway Management Inc.; Hendrix College; Hewlett-Packard; Kimberly-Clark Corpora-tion; Log Cabin Democrat; Nabholz Construc-tion Corporation; Park Hill Home; Simmons

First National Bank; Smith Ford; and Snap-on Equipment. Bronze:• 501 LIFE; ARcare; Arkansas Blue Cross and Blue Shield; Arkansas Democrat-Gazette – River Valley & Ozark Edition; Bank of the Ozarks; Baptist Health; BHP Billiton; Caldwell Toyota; Covington Roofing, Covington Properties and Covington Construction; Delta Dental of Arkansas; Garver; International Pa-per; JSI Metal Recycling; Magie-Mabrey Eye Clinic; McDonald’s; Preferred Medical; Rogers Group; Salter Properties, Salter Construction and Metro Square; Textbook Brokers; Tipton & Hurst; and US Compounding.

Chairman’s Circle recognizes 2014 Top Chamber investors First, do no harm

Ironically, the Arkansas legislature would do well to remember those famous words from Hip-pocrates as they consider what to do with the private option and health care during the cur-rent legislative session.

The private option is legislation originally passed in 2013 that extended private (but subsi-dized) insurance coverage to 210,000 previously uninsured Arkansans.

It was the state of Arkansas’s means of com-plying with the federal Affordable Care Act (or Obamacare) requirement to expand Medicaid. The amount of direct federal aid to Arkansas is over one billion dollars annually. That comes at no cost to the state, until 2020, when it is sched-uled to kick in a 10 percent match.

The private option is unique to Arkansas. That’s because some legislative leaders had the ambition and initiative to actively negotiate with the federal government rather than just swallow the over-the-counter version of Obamacare.

They successfully negotiated “waivers” that allowed Arkansans to purchase private insur-ance rather than take Medicaid. They created a plan of modest co-payments and health savings accounts. Simply put, they innovated.

Here is what we know after living with the private option for the last two years: states that lacked the initiative to negotiate and accept fed-eral aid have suffered greatly. Rural hospitals are closing and insurance premiums are rising. Meanwhile Arkansas has lead the nation in the reduction of uninsured. And insurance premi-ums on the marketplace will decline by at least 2 percent in 2015. People are free to criticize the private option in theory. But in practice, it is an unqualified success.

If those numbers don’t persuade you, maybe this one will. 4,500 Faulkner County jobs will be negatively impacted if Arkansas doesn’t renew the private option. Conway Regional’s 1,300 em-ployees will be directly impacted. The 450 jobs associated with the coming Baptist Hospital will be directly impacted. The state budget cuts that will be necessary if we don’t renew the private option will absolutely hurt UCA (1,500 jobs), Conway Human Development Center (1,200 jobs), and AETN (90 jobs).

The hard work of innovating, executing and reforming has, for the most part, been done over the last two years. Now we just need our legisla-tors to remember that first rule of medicine…”do no harm.”

Editorial

The Conway Area Chamber of Commerce’s 2015 community profile and resource guide is now avail-able at ConwayChamber.org. Conway+ is the theme of the 2015 quality-of-life and local reference pub-lication. It will be available in print in the coming weeks.

The Chamber sends the guide by direct mail to prospective residents and companies that contact the Chamber about relocating to Conway, house-holds of a qualifying income relocating within Con-way’s traditional trade area, and high-income house-holds in Conway and surrounding communities.

Chamber Resource Guide Online

Faulkner County Business Journal To subscribe call (501) 329-2927 • Log Cabin Democrat4D — Sunday, January 18, 2015

Preferred Medical is a med-ical supply company that fo-cuses on the Long-Term Care market, which includes nurs-ing homes, assisted living fa-cilities, home health agencies, hospice providers, and Medic-aid and Medicare durable med-ical equipment providers.

Using its own fleet of trucks and drivers, the Conwaybased company delivers medical sup-plies, specialty beds, and Medi-care Part B services to custom-ers located within a 200-mile radius of its distribution center on Nabco Street.

It also of-fers next-day shipping to Texas, Okla-homa, Mis-souri, Tennes-see, Louisiana and Missis-sippi as well as two-day shipping to almost any state in the south-ern part of the country.

In 1982, Phillip Nelson founded Preferred Medical in North Little Rock.

Midstate Medical, as it was known at the time, was a small, family owned company that focused on providing med-ical supplies to nursing homes in a small part of the state of Arkansas.

After earning an excellent reputation in its first 20 years

of service, the company was purchased in 2002 by Todd Ross. In the last 12 years, ev-

erything has changed. After taking the reins in

2002, Ross brought a strate-gic vision of growth and energy to Midstate Medical. He built upon the small company’s solid foundation and began its expo-nential growth from this point forward, both in revenue and service area.

His first order of business was to expand the service to the entire state of Arkansas and to add all elements of the

Long-Term Care market to the company’s core business of Skilled Nursing Facilities.

“We decided not to try to be all things to all people in the medical supply space,” he said. “This decision made us focus on Long-Term Care, and make it our core competency.”

After establishing the com-pany as a full-service provid-er, a geographic expansion was the next target. This required a larger facility, which brought the company to Conway.

The first destination was Memphis, and the state of Ten-

nessee, in 2005. When the expansion of the

company’s footprint began, the name was changed to Pre-ferred Medical, to reflect the company’s more global position from its earlier roots.

After establishing its iden-tity in Tennessee, Preferred Medical expanded into Mis-souri and Oklahoma in 2007. As the company took its cus-tomer-centric message to other regions, Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi welcomed them into their market.

Seeing the opportunity to

add some vertical integration, Ross began a sourcing busi-ness called Integrity Sourcing & Logistics.

This new venture provided an opportunity to source non-emotional commodity prod-ucts from China and sell them to Preferred Medical and other peer companies in the market-place across the United States.

“ISL gives us the chance to control our own destiny with some of the commodity prod-ucts our customers consume, while at the same time, pro-vides another revenue stream in our existing business and marketplace,” Ross said.

With strategic relationships with the quality manufactur-ers they represent, Preferred Medical now performs fulfill-ment services for several na-tional companies and ships products directly to patients at home.

“As the consumer contin-ues to find new ways to receive health care, we are poised to fulfill the needs for providers and retail companies,” he said. “Our goal is to get the products straight to the consumer.”

Preferred Medical has been the recipient of many awards through its growth in the mar-ket.

The company was named a finalist for Arkansas Busi-ness’s Business of the year in 2003, one of Forbes Fastest Growing Companies in 2006, and most recently, Member of the Year from National Dis-tributing and Contracting in 2013.

Fast forward to today, and you will find Preferred Medi-cal focused on its core business and continuing to find oppor-tunities to say “yes” to its cus-tomers, when others say “no.”

Preferred Medical: Customer focused, service orientedConway-based mediCal supply

Company provides loCal

serviCe to southern u.s.

Cover Story

In a little over a decade, Preferred Medical CEO Todd Ross has grown a local medi-cal supply business into one of the country’s recognized leaders in long term care products.

Preferred Medical’s Conway location employs 40 operates in 7 states.

After establishing the company

as a full-service provider, a geo-

graphic expansion was the next

target. This required a larger

facility, which brought the

company to Conway.

Faulkner County Business Journal To subscribe call (501) 329-2927 • Log Cabin Democrat6D — Sunday, January 18, 2015

Retailers and concessionaires have until March 1 to apply to participate in the 34th annual Toad Suck Daze festi-val. Applications are available online at ToadSuck.org.

Retail aRea Beginning with the 2015 festival

May 1-3, the retail area will include two sections: Toad Market and the new Oak Street Galleria. The Oak Street Galleria will feature retailers that sell merchandise complementing the se-lection shoppers can find in downtown Conway. High-end boutiques and fine arts and crafts vendors will make up this new area. A collection of downtown Conway merchants and the Toad Suck Daze vendor jury will choose the Galle-ria’s participating vendors.

Booth space for Toad Market and Oak Street Galleria is 10 feet by 10 feet and costs $275. Electricity is $50 per booth. A CD or DVD containing a min-imum of three pictures of merchandise to be sold must accompany each appli-cation. The deadline to submit applica-tions is March 1, but late applications

will be accepted through April 17 with a $15 late fee.

ConCessionsSetup costs for concessionaires are

$18 per linear foot for members of the Conway Area Chamber of Commerce and $25 per linear foot for non-mem-bers. Selection of concession vendors is based on a number of factors, including menu variety and selections, point-of-sale presentation, size of the trailer or tent, potential sales performance, and overall compatibility with the festival. A photo of the trailer or tent, a menu, and space and electrical requirements must accompany the application.

For additional information about the application process for retail and con-cessions, visit ToadSuck.org or contact Mary Margaret Satterfield, the Con-way Area Chamber’s director of Toad Suck Daze and events, at mary@con-wayarkansas.org or 501-932-5412.

Applications to be a retail or concession vendor for this year’s Toad Suck Daze are available at Toad-Suck.org.

For more than 30 years, Toad Suck Daze has provided fun for the entire family dur-ing the first weekend in May. Proceeds from food, attractions, and T-shirt and merchandise sales support the festival’s pri-mary goal – raising money to promote education initiatives in Faulkner County.

Since the Toad Suck Daze Community Service Scholar-ship Program began, it has awarded more than $1.5 mil-lion in the form of direct schol-arships, endowments and a pre-K initiative.

Approximately 290 Faulkner County students have received financial assis-

tance through direct scholar-ships and endowments at Cen-tral Baptist College, Hendrix College, the University of Cen-tral Arkansas and the Arkan-sas Community Foundation of Faulkner County.

This year the committee will award up to $25,000 in direct scholarships:

• Scholarships in the amount of $3,000 each will be awarded to students who plan to attend Central Baptist Col-lege, Hendrix College, or the University of Central Arkan-sas.

• Scholarships in the amount of $1,000 each will be awarded to students who plan

to attend the University of Ar-kansas Community College at Morrilton.

Graduates of a Faulkner County high school or home-school who plan to attend UCA, Hendrix College, CBC or UAC-

CM in the fall of 2015 are eli-gible to apply. Applications are available online at ToadSuck.org or at the four participating colleges, all Faulkner County high schools and the Conway Area Chamber of Commerce.

The deadline to apply is Friday, March 13.

The purpose of the Toad Suck Daze Community Ser-vice Scholarship is to encour-age community service among Faulkner County youth and to provide an opportunity for educational and community growth.

For this reason, all scholar-ships require a minimum of 20 hours of active community ser-vice with a nonprofit organiza-tion in Faulkner County. Ap-plicants also must complete 12 volunteer hours during the Toad Suck Daze festival, set May 1-3 in downtown Conway.

For more information, con-tact Mary Margaret Satterfield at the Conway Area Chamber of Commerce at 501-932-5412 or Mary@ConwayArkansas.org.

Toad Suck Daze expands retail area, applications available

Toad Suck 2015 scholarship applications available now

The 2014 Toad Suck Daze scholarship recipients are recognized on the Main Stage during the festival.

Faulkner County Business Journal Sunday, January 18, 2015 — 7D Log Cabin Democrat • Find our online edition at www.thecabin.net

Price .........Address .............. Bed/BAth ....... suBdivision ............sQFt ...... $/sQ Ft ......Built

$305,000 ........4910 Park Place Drive ......4/3/0 ...................... Westin Park ........................... 2927 ........... $104.20 .............2001$287,500 .........3080 Windcrest Drive ........5/3/1 ...................... Windcrest .............................. 3588 ........... $80.13 ...............1997$265,000 .........920 Reynolds Ave. .............2/2/1 ...................... The Village at Hendrix ............ 1560 ........... $169.87 .............2012 $244,000 .........4516 Clearwell ..................3/2/1 ...................... None ..................................... 3000 ........... $81.33 ...............1960$220,000 .........1810 Poteete ....................3/2/0 ...................... St. Johns ............................... 2083 ........... $105.62 .............2010

top resiDential home sales, JanuaryConway to serve as Leadercast host site for fourth consecutive year

Business lead-ers in the Conway area can access the knowledge and ex-perience of world-re-nowned leaders by attending Leadercast® at Central Baptist College on May 8, 2015. This is the fourth consecutive year the Conway Area Chamber of Com-merce has hosted a broadcast in Conway.

The Leadercast event, a brand that builds “Leaders Worth Following,” is broadcast live from Atlanta to hundreds of sites around the world, including Conway. The 2015 simulcast will feature the following speakers:

Andy Stanley, leadership author and communicator; •Peyton Manning, Super Bowl-winning quarterback and five-time NFL •MVP; Malala Yousafzai, Nobel Laureate and founder of The Malala Fund; •Ed Catmull, president of Pixar & Disney Animation Studios; •Seth Godin, innovative thinker and best-selling author; •Rudy Giuliani, 107th mayor of New York City from 1993-2001; •Aja Brown, mayor of the city of Compton, California; •Bill McDermott, CEO of SAP AG; •Commander Rorke Denver, Navy SEAL Commander and author; and •Bill and Giuliana Rancic, award-winning personalities and co-hosts of •Leadercast.

Leadercast exists to change positively the way the world thinks about lead-ership. This year’s theme – The Brave Ones – will explore what it means to lead in a way that creates bold cultures, builds faithful employees, and produc-es high achievement.

For more information about Leadercast, visit Leadercast.com. For local tick-eting information, call 501-932-5411 or visit ConwayChamber.org.