Regional One Health charting its course

CEO of Memphis health system sets goals despite uncertain future of Obamacare

While President Trump and Congress outline ways to reshape the American health care system, health care leaders in Memphis continue charting their own courses.

Dr. Reginald Coopwood, in his seventh year as chief executive officer of Regional One Health, said continuing to foster a culture of accountability among 3,000 employees and striving for zero harm to patients at the health system including the Regional Medical Center are among his top goals this year.

Here, edited for brevity, are excerpts from a recent conversation with Coopwood: The Affordable Care Act The ACA, or Obamacare, is a law that wasn't perfect, but it was a law that tried to move the country into a position to make sure that more of its residents had coverage. Because of the resistance of those not in power for the past eight years to improve on the law, the law has been strained and stretched and has created large increases in premiums and things like that. So I’m not a proponent of repeal. I'm a proponent of repair, which I hear some Republican legislators are talking about, is repair. Top challenges for 2017 Our top challenges are continuing to grow the organization, to maintain the

subsidies that we get with the potential changing federal market and the failure to expand Medicaid in our state.

We continue to carry anywhere from 25 to 27 percent uninsured, the uncertainties around that. If you pull the dollars back in subsidy payments (as the Affordable Care Act mandated for hospitals) and don't expand coverage, it becomes a very difficult math equation for us or any hospital who has this level of uninsured burden. New facilities or services We're focusing on growing our services, our complement of services at our East Campus. We've added a men's health practice with the (University of Tennessee Health Science Center) Department of Urology, we're looking to expand among the specialty practices that are there as we try to round out our kind of onevisit process.

We'll be working in the upcoming year with the (UTHSC) Department of Emergency Medicine to ultimately transition the care of our emergency patients, except for our major trauma patients, to be under the care of emergency medicine-trained physicians.

I feel that's imperative for an organization that wants to set itself apart in the area of emergency care. Priorities for the year We have what we've embraced as an organization is our top five, and they are related to our pillars and our strategic plan. 1. From a quality standpoint, we are on a campaign throughout the organization to get to zero harm, where as we're treating, curing, saving lives, that we're also focusing on making sure that we do no harm in that process ... 2. The next thing is our people, investing in our employees and our physicians to improve their engagement, such that they can be able to execute on the other things. 3. We’re also focused on service and making sure that as we're saving lives on a daily basis, we're doing it in a way that people see that we have a compassionate, engaged workforce ... 4. Followed by that is growth. We are focusing on how we need to grow, whether it's grow the volume of patients in the hospital, it's growing our outpatient services with Harbor of Health and our primary care clinics on our East Campus, continuing that growth. 5. And the last is finances, to maintain a strong bottom line, which is a product of those top four.