UO Magazine > Piedmont Triad Region: Greensboro, NC

Community Profile

The Next Greatest Thing The Piedmont Triad Region of NC

PAGE 1

The 36 Largest Corporate Headquarters in
the Triad

Based on number of employees

Wake Forest University Baptist
Medical Center

Novant Health/Forsyth Medical Center

Moses H. Cone Memorial Hospital

Lowes Foods

Klaussner Furniture

High Point Regional Health System

Laboratory Corp of America

Lorillard Inc.

RFMD (formerly RF Micro Devices)

TIMCO Aviation Services

Volvo Trucks North America

Hanesbrands

Renfro Corp

Unifi

Thomas Built Buses

Gilbarco Veeder-Root

International Textile Group (ITG)

Sealy Corp

VF Corporation

United Healthcare

Spectrum Laboratory Network

BB&T

Thomasville Furniture Industries

Reynolds American

Krispy Kreme Doughnut Corp

Banner Pharmacaps

Replacements Limited

Liberty Hardware

Epes Carriers

Center for Creative Leadership

Kay Chemical Company

Honda Aircraft Company

New Breed

Novartis Animal Health

Tanger Factory Outlet Centers

Kayser-Roth Corporation

Just be aware that the hospitality cannot make up for the fact this can be a lonely place for singles, warns Spongberg. A New York native, he came to the Chapel Hill area as an undergraduate at UNC Chapel Hill, then went to med school at UNC Greensboro. He wasn’t the typical college student—Spongberg first worked at General Electric in corporate finance before tossing that career to get a PhD in health psychology, “which started the slippery slope toward med school,” he jokes.

There’s one trend he hasn’t been able to buck yet. “They say if you come into your residency here single, you leave single,” he notes. He blames it on sheer population numbers, as the same ad he ran on Match.com in Winston-Salem generated far fewer responses than when he ran it for Raleigh.

He’s also found himself out of step at times with the conservative, religious-based demographics surrounding him. “It will be a part of your practice,” he says. “People will ask you what religion you are, and you’ll hear ‘I’m a Christian’ a lot. If church isn’t a big part of your life, it cuts off an important social outlet.”

Wolfe says a vascular surgeon recently moved away because Asheboro doesn’t offer parochial schools, and his wife wanted their children to receive a private education. Beyond that, she can’t recall any specific reasons doctors leave or turn down a job offer. As for Hampton, his only complaint is that he can’t satisfy his hankerings for Skyline Chili.

Money goes a long way in the Piedmont Triad. For starters, several of the systems use national salary averages such as Sullivan, Cotter and Associates and MGMA data as a benchmark, “because we don’t’ feel like we are competing within the Piedmont for a physician,” says Wolfe. “We are competing within the country.”

All areas of the cost of living are low here, particularly real estate. For instance, Hampton likes the fact he could buy a 2,500-square-foot ranch with four bedrooms on a plot of land for $140,000. His short stint living in California, paying $880 a month to rent a two-bedroom apartment with another student, makes him appreciate the mortgage payment even more. “And I have like five times more space than we had out there,” he adds.

Hampton also looked into area’s tax system before accepting his residency position. Had he chosen Charlotte, he claims the most economical option was to live in South Carolina and drive 45 minutes to work each morning.

To keep malpractice rates in check, Forsyth, part of Novant Health, created its own malpractice insurance company in May 2007. Officials at Novant say the idea to form the company, known as New Star, initially came from surveys and interviews with doctors who expressed tremendous concerns about the dramatically rising costs of medical malpractice premiums. Some specialists reported paying more than $50,000 a year in insurance premiums alone. The move also ensures high risk specialties like obstetrics can continue to practice in Piedmont Triad without threats of extinction.

To their own beat

The all-for-one mentality shown by the Triad’s cities doesn’t extend to the hospital systems, however. Each city has its major system—Moses Cone Health System in Greensboro, Forsyth Medical Center in Winston-Salem, and High Point Regional—plus the all-encompassing Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center. On the other hand, competition means each of the systems has carved out its particular niche—Forsyth Medical Center, for example, has an extensive single-site birthing center, while Wake Forest has a pediatric emergency and trauma center with equipment designed and sized specifically for children.

Hospitals in the Piedmont Triad take pleasure in making sure they don’t follow the leader in their quest for excellence, which means each facility is a leader on its own:

Moses Cone Health System: A new heart and vascular center is the first clue this Greensboro system, which encompasses five hospitals and 1,100 licensed beds, prides itself on cardiology care. It is working on becoming an accredited chest pain center as well, reports Rebekah Driggers, the manager of physician and specialty recruitment at Moses Cone. It was recently awarded a stroke certification, and is home to the first free-standing women’s OB hospital in North Carolina. Add a regional cancer center to its list of specialties, too.

High Point Regional Health System: This 384-bed hospital recently applied under the state’s certificate of need status to expand to a 400-bed facility. As the tertiary care hospital in the Triad, it covers a southern territory that stretches halfway to Charlotte. “And we offer a lot more specialties than you would normally find in a 380-bed hospital,” Roney points out. Count on physicians here to handle open-heart surgeries, neurosurgery, and stroke treatments—everything except transplants and major pediatric illnesses. Its sleep lab is accredited, as well as its inpatient rehabilitation program.

High Point Regional also is a magnet hospital for nursing excellence. “When it comes to turnover, we blow everybody out of the water, including our competition in the Triad,” Roney says. “We know in order to have a well-run hospital, we need nurses and so we put a lot of resources into that effort and it shows.”

Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center: WFUBMC is the largest health-care system in the Triad, and the region’s only academic medical center. It is comprised of the 872-bed North Carolina Baptist Hospital and Wake Forest University Health Sciences, which operates the School of Medicine. This year it won the 2006-07 Consumer Choice Award for the Winston-Salem metropolitan area—a designation to honor hospitals that consumers rate as having the highest quality and image. U.S. News and World Report also consistently ranks WFUBMC as one of America’s best hospitals. Of the 169 doctors from the Winston-Salem metropolitan area included in the latest update of Best Doctors in America, almost 90 percent—that’s 149 doctors—are at WFUBMC.

Forsyth Medical Center: Welcome to the first certified stroke, hip joint replacement, knee joint replacement, and congestive heart failure programs in North Carolina. The hospital also has joined a national coalition to provide free electronic prescribing capabilities for every physician in America. The 847-bed facility will add 114 patient care beds in a new wing to open later this year.

Forsyth Medical Center and Novant Health have received numerous awards for patient care in recent years, but what makes McCullough’s list of accomplishments is the fact that the employees of Forsyth Medical Center and its affiliates received the North Carolina United Way employee spirit award.

Randolph Hospital: Patient satisfaction scores for these 145 licensed beds in Asheboro are in the 98 percent range, so it’s no wonder Wolfe can say Randolph is one of three in North Carolina to win a national quality award for phenomenal care. Its cancer center is accredited with commendations, and the American Diabetes Association has recognized it for its quality diabetes self-management education program.

Opportunity knocking

Hampton just hopes he can find a permanent position when his residency ends. At the moment, he puts his chances at a neonatal spot opening up in the next 12 months at 50/50. Recruiters may have a more positive prediction. After all, says Wolfe, “All of a sudden in the last year, our local practices have really started to recruit physicians in the double digits. For a while, there had not been such a demand. But right now, almost every primary care practice in town is recruiting.” The numbers are saying to her that not only is the population growing, but folks are choosing to stay home for their medical care rather than seek out other metropolitan centers in the state.

It’s the same story at WFUBMC. According to William Applegate, MD, MPH, the interim president of Wake Forest University Health Sciences and dean of the medical school, North Carolina is expected to grow in population by more than 40 percent in the next 25 years, so he projects a shortage of all types of doctors.

Moses Cone conducts a community needs assessment every five years in an attempt to head off any shortages in Greensboro. Right now, Driggers is helping private practices recruit in neurology, while the hospital wants to talk to general surgeons to fill some retirements in the pipeline. The reports say numbers for GI, hematology, oncology, nephrology and ophthalmology will dwindle in the near future, creating openings there.

Meanwhile, Roney says she doesn’t need any physicians at the moment, although High Point, too, brings in a consulting firm to project physician demand over three-year increments so that is likely to change in the future.

The question most physician candidates ask, says Driggers, concerns call schedules. In her case, private practices average one day in seven, with some as high as one in nine.

If he doesn’t find a permanent position and considers leaving the area, Hampton says his family will not be pleased. “My wife told me I’ll have to drag her out of our house kicking and screaming. To put it plainly,” says Hampton, “she loves the area.” END

TOP OF PAGE TOP OF story Writer Julie Sturgeon is a regular contributor to UO.