After being gone nearly twenty years, Darrell King has come home to Jackson. The former director of business operations at the Jackson Clinic has returned to the healthcare scene in West Tennessee, just this time he is across the street from the clinic. As vice president for West Tennessee Medical Group, King is bringing practice administration experience to the hospital side of operations.
An Old Hickory Academy alumnus, King earned his bachelor’s degree in finance from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville in 1988. His first job out of college was with First American Bank, which is now Regions Bank, in Nashville. In 1989, he transferred to Jackson. “In the early 1990’s banking was sort of a hit or miss industry,” said King. “A friend of mine, who was with the Jackson Clinic, mentioned they had an opening in their business office and thought that with my background I would be a good fit for the position. It seemed like a good move so in 1990 I joined the clinic as their business office manager.”
By 1998, King was married with a daughter and was awaiting the arrival of his son. He was also the director of business operations for the clinic, was dealing with marketing, played a role in the constructions of the Jackson Clinic South as well as the Jackson Clinic North and earned his Master of Business Administration degree from Union University. “Thanks to Carl Rudd giving me the opportunity to be involved in lots of different things at the clinic, my role had really expanded and I had learned so much,” said King. “But I also knew that I had probably gone as far as I could at the Clinic at the time so I started looking to see what other opportunities were out there.”
Ironically King found the right opportunity while waiting to welcome his second child into the world. “My wife Tracey, was in labor with our son,” he said. “I was looking in a journal and saw an opportunity in Maryville, Tennessee. It was a chief executive office for a smaller group than the Jackson Clinic but it afforded me the opportunity to learn new things, so in the summer of 1997 we moved back to East Tennessee.”
Over the next ten years, King helped the clinic grow from 20 to 50 providers, acquired a practice and started a real estate partnership. King knew it was time to move on and his next opportunity came through a familiar hometown connection. “Carl Rudd had told me about an opportunity in Fort Smith, Arkansas. He suggested that I talk to someone he knew in Jonesboro who had been in Fort Smith,” said King, who is a certified medical practice executive. “It was from that call that I learned of a chief operating officer position at Northeast Arkansas Clinic (NEC).”
In 2007, King took the reigns as COO for NEC. “It was a very progressive group of 80 physicians,” he said. “The group had a not for profit foundation and a real estate partnership. They also owned 40 percent of the local hospital, which was a different twist on things for me. In 2010, Baptist Memorial Healthcare out of Memphis bought the clinic and we became Northeast Arkansas Baptist Clinic. I took over as CEO, recruited 45 new doctors to the clinic and moved into a new building that was adjacent to the new hospital Baptist opened in 2014. The NEA Baptist facility was the largest construction project of its kind in Arkansas and one of the ten largest healthcare construction projects in the country at that time.”
While Jonesboro was closer to home than they had been in East Tennessee, King says the thought of returning to Jackson was something they had known they would do if the right opportunity arose. In the fall of 2015, West Tennessee Healthcare made him an offer too good to refuse. On December 1, King became the vice president of West Tennessee Medical Group where he is responsible for more than 80 hospital-employed physicians including the hospitalist program, a gastroenterology group, neurosciences and cardiovascular surgery.
“What I found so interesting about this opportunity was that not only would I get to work for my hometown health system, I would be moving from the private side to the health system side of healthcare,” said King. “While I still do a lot of the same things that I did with the clinic, I now have exposure to other things going on inside the health system.”
Although he has only been in the position a few months, King has jumped right in and is busy working on several projects. “While I am still meeting with people and getting oriented to the organization, I still have to deal with normal practice operation issues that come up,” he said. “We are also talking about what the medical group’s needs are and trying to build some brand identity. West Tennessee Medical Group is a significant group of physicians that are employed by West Tennessee Healthcare. Physician recruitment is also at the top of my list.”
Down the road, King expects healthcare will continue to change and looks forward to being a part of it. “I think there will still be an integration of physicians and health systems. I am not a doctor but having worked with them for so long I hope to bridge the gap between what they do and what is needed for our community,” he said. “This is a big busy place and it has become so evident to me what a regional healthcare system it really is. The scope of services we provide is a testament to the medical hub Jackson is.”
Moving to Jackson has been coming home for King, but it has not come without some adjustments. While his oldest daughter Kathryn is a sophomore in college, his son, Will, is finishing his senior year in high school. “Tracey and Will are staying in Jonesboro until he graduates this spring and will move here this summer,” said King. “While we are still sort of working through the transition, Jackson feels like home to all of us and we cannot wait to be involved in the community.”
Photo Notes:
Headshot of Darrell King
Family photo “Darrell King’s family supporting son Will on the soccer field.”
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