Regional Medical Center adopts new brand: ‘Regional One Health’

Feb. 26--The Regional Medical Center -- the deeply rooted Memphis hospital best known for its trauma care, burn center and services for high-risk births -- will keep its name.

But the hospital is the flagship for a health care system that also includes a broader array of services and recently added or upgraded facilities. The nonprofit corporation that oversees them all wants to reintroduce itself, particularly to people with health insurance, by adopting a new brand name for the system.

Memphis, meet Regional One Health.

"We felt that since we are bigger than just a hospital, we needed to make sure that we brand ourselves and rebrand ourselves that people know a couple of things," Dr. Reginald Coopwood, chief executive officer of what is now known as Regional One Health said in an interview.

Coopwood and other officials on Wednesday officially unveiled the new Regional One Health name and logo on both sides of the hospital complex straddling high above Jefferson Avenue.

The name last changed in 1983, to Regional Medical Center at Memphis, or The Med, from John Gaston Hospital. The system dropped the "at Memphis" from the Regional Medical Center's name more than a year ago.

Coopwood said the Regional Medical Center will remain a regional leader without any competitors in trauma care for severely injured people, burn treatment and birth-related, services.

However, during strategic planning with the goal of being a leading academic medical center after his arrival as the CEO about four years ago, Coopwood said it was clear that "The Med" suffered from a widespread image as "the poor people's hospital."

"Today, the community feels if I have insurance, I therefore don't have to go to The Med," Coopwood said. "So in order for us to change the community's understanding of who we are, we felt that along with the fact that we've added multiple assets to who we are, we felt that rebranding served both purposes."

The system has invested a total of about $35 million in projects that included adding a new four-suite surgery center, a 24-bed extended-care hospital and a 30-bed rehabilitation hospital to three previously vacant floors of Turner Tower, originally built in 1992 on the hospital's Medical Center-area campus.

The new facilities will broadcast the new brand name, clinics will be arms of the Regional One Health Primary Care Network and the system's foundation also will adopt it, Coopwood said.

The health care system, which has about 2,200 employees, is looking to expand physician services, provided by doctors who also are faculty members at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, to East Memphis.

In 2012, the Med purchased 49 acres at the corner of Bill Morris Parkway and Kirby and "we're looking to secure clinical space for outpatient services for physicians who provide care and the possibility of doing things like imaging services, minor emergency services out there," Coopwood said. July 1 is the startup target date.

Commercial insurance accounted for a little more than 14 percent of nearly $319 million in net revenue in the system's 2012 budget year. Coopwood said he wants to grow that to 30 to 40 percent, while still serving uninsured people.

"Today, when one needs an elective procedure, the choices have always been Baptist, Methodist, St. Francis," Coopwood said. "Fine institutions, but we want to be on the list for the community, our community, which is Midtown, Downtown, Harbor Town and encroaching into East Memphis.

"So we're not just for the uninsured," he said. "We're for all of Memphis. Regional One Health will cover Memphis."

___

(c)2014 The Commercial Appeal (Memphis, Tenn.)

Visit The Commercial Appeal (Memphis, Tenn.) at www.commercialappeal.com</p>

Distributed by MCT Information Services