There has been plenty of activity on the Crystal Bridges campus in Bentonville with the expansion of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, along with the opening last year of buildings housing the Alice L. Walton School of Medicine and Heartland Whole Health Institute. Two miles east of downtown Bentonville, there's a separate 100-acre campus that might prove just as exciting.

This is where Alice Walton will put her whole-health philosophy to work, starting with cardiac care. Walton's vision extends beyond promoting whole-health concepts through HWHI and training doctors at AWSOM. She would like to see northwest Arkansas considered a health-care destination in the same way people think of flying to the Mayo Clinic.

The Alice L. Walton Foundation purchased 100 acres just west of Interstate 49 with the goal of opening a cardiac center there in December 2028. In the fall of 2024, the foundation, Mercy Health System and HWHI announced a 30-year agreement to boost cardiac care. Mercy committed $350 million. The foundation committed another $350 million to build facilities and recruit doctors. The organizations also entered into an agreement with Cleveland Clinic, which will serve as a consultant and offer best practices.

Mercy hopes to add space to its existing hospital in Rogers for cardiac care and be a tenant at the foundation's outpatient center on the new campus.

The Northwest Arkansas Council released a report in 2019 that said the region was missing out on $950 million a year because residents were spending money elsewhere on health care. Meanwhile, northwest Arkansas wasn't attracting patients from outside the region due to a lack of specialty care services.

"The intention of this partnership is to make northwest Arkansas a destination for the highest level of health care," Dr. Scott Cooper of Rogers told Axios last year.

The 2019 report noted that advanced cardiology was one of the specialties with the most "economically impactful........

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