Leader’s Corner: Our Second Century of Health Care

Left to right- Judy Wilson, President Baptist Tipton Auxiliary, Alex Mason, Covington High School, Ellie Nason, Covington High School and Shelton Newman, Munford High School

As we finish celebrating of our first century of providing health care in the Mid-South, it’s time to start focusing on our second century. Part of our vision says we will be the provider of choice by transforming the delivery of care, and that’s exactly what we’re doing.

Many of you are aware of the construction projects that are under way or will begin soon. Our new NEA Baptist Memorial Hospital, NEA Baptist Clinic headquarters and Baptist Cancer Center in Jonesboro, Ark., will open later this year. We recently received approval from the state of Tennessee to build an integrated cancer center on the Baptist Memphis campus and a new pediatric emergency department at Baptist Women’s Hospital. Preliminary work has begun on a new Baptist North Mississippi facility in Oxford, and we are seeking the state’s permission to build a second rehabilitation hospital in Germantown.

Perhaps our biggest project is Baptist OneCare—our transition to an electronic medical record. Our team is working extremely hard on this project, and I’d like to thank them for their effort. I’d also like to thank those of you who are making sacrifices and taking on extra work so we could assemble the Baptist OneCare team.

Your contributions ultimately will help our patients because Baptist OneCare will allow us to provide better care and help our physicians, as well.

Baptist Medical Group, our multispecialty physician practice, continues to acquire new physicians and physician practices.

Most recently, Family Physicians Group, one of the largest and oldest primary care groups in the city, decided to join BMG.

We’ll be adding more physicians and groups in the near future and strengthening our partnerships with physicians so together we can coordinate patient care and improve quality.

By now you should have received an e-mail with a link to a video about the DOVE project. In that video, I explained how the DOVE project will help us stay ahead of our rapidly changing health care world. It is very important to our future, and each and every one of us will play a role in its implementation and success.

We will also introduce a new wellness program for you that I hope you will join. Stay tuned to Leader and MyBaptist for more information.

As we undertake these and other huge projects, please know that I appreciate the contributions you make to Baptist every day.

None of our success would be possible without your hard work and dedication, and we will need even more of that as we position Baptist for this new health care world.

Thank you for all you do for Baptist.