Regional One Health’s new state-of-the-art East Memphis campus at 6555 Quince boasts innovative technology, state-of-the-art equipment and a rapidly expanding patient base.
But for the coalition of medical professionals who worked for years to bring the gleaming facility from concept to reality, that’s just the beginning. Their vision includes even more developments in the coming years for the recently opened center.
“We saw a need for differentiation in Memphis healthcare and when we sat down to discuss this center, we imagined what that would look like,” said Reginald W. Coopwood, MD, president and CEO of Regional One. “Our goal is to improve the level of care and research and create a new standard of men’s health care in our community.”
The center is off to an impressive start.
The five-story, five 50,000-square-foot building has been converted from office space to a modern medical facility with all the latest bells and whistles.
There is a wing dedicated to reproductive medicine and another to rehabilitative medicine. The campus offers multispecialty care, including cardiology, endocrinology and rheumatology, along with a pharmacy and imaging services.
On the fifth floor is a full-service urology practice, which is designed to evolve into a comprehensive men’s healthcare clinic.
“The whole concept of a comprehensive men’s health center has been in my mind for years,” said Robert Wake, MD, chairman of the Department of Urology at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center and a specialist at the new Regional One campus. “There are numerous hospitals and centers all over the country specializing in women’s
healthcare and they provide valuable services, but you just don’t see that many focused on men’s health care. We want to change that.”
A 2015 report published in the Asian Journal of Urology supports Wake’s claim.
A review of US News & World Report’s 50 top-ranked hospitals in America revealed that while 98 percent of the facilities offered some type of women’s health center, fewer than one-third offered centers devoted to comprehensive men’s health care.
“It’s really only been within the last decade that there has been any kind of a movement to offer clinics focused on men’s health,” Wake said. “There are few of them across the country and perhaps that’s because it hasn’t proven to be a sustainable model, or perhaps we’re just at the forefront of a new wave of health care practices. I hope it’s the latter.”
The urology division of Regional One’s new campus offers a suite of services for patients and features an MRI Ultrasound Fusion imaging machine that more accurately pinpoints biopsies to detect and diagnose prostate cancer. The urology component of the clinic is the foundation of what Coopwood and Wake envision as the first comprehensive men’s health clinic in the region.
Regional One has invested some $9 million in the facility and additional funding will be required to offer additional services dedicated to men’s healthcare. The goal is to expand the offerings and provide the comprehensive men’s care in three to five years.
“We want this to be a place where men can feel comfortable coming in for blood pressure and cholesterol checks, maybe see a urologist about prostate issues or erectile dysfunction or see a specialist to get help with weight loss or smoking cessation or sleep problems or to discuss preventative medicine,” Wake said.
“We’ve come a long way in the last few years since starting this project and we know we’ve got a way to go, but we’re on the way. This is a tremendous start.”
Since the center launched with a soft opening in late 2015, about 12,000 patient visits have been recorded. There are 15 physicians on campus and about three dozen support staff.
The innovative design of the building ensures that patients aren’t walking through corridor after corridor to see different doctors; instead, the medical professionals come to them.
After patients are signed in they receive tags that contain RFID chips and track where they are and how long they’ve been waiting. Medical personnel also carry badges with the implanted chips and the chips are also located on various machines for easy location.
Patients remain in one room while specialists come to them and an electronic chart near the medical staff station shows where each patient is situated, where medical personnel are at any given moment and even where portable machines are in use.
“This is not your typical office building or medical facility,” Coopwood said. “We want Regional One to be part of the Memphis medical community that’s known as disruptive. We want to do things differently and do things better. Memphis deserves this.”
In addition to the medical services, patients will be able to visit the onsite pharmacy to get prescriptions filled. Eventually, Wake would like to see counseling services offered and possibly outpatient surgery.
“We’re building a medical neighborhood where you can come in for most of your health issues and see medical professionals who will address those with you,” Wake said. “It’s not exactly a ‘Field of Dreams’ situation where we believe that if we build it people will come, but we’re optimistic that they will. This is something that we believe will make our community a better place to live.”
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