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A 148 exam rooms, 34 outpatient beds, and 8 operating rooms.

Welcome to a first-of its-kind medical campus in West Tennessee.

Hello, I'm Peter Noel.

This edition of Tennessee is Talking, we're on location at the brand new Jackson Clinic-Baptist Memorial Outpatient Campus.

Let the conversation begin.

[crosstalk] That's so cool.

Then that's when I said that-.

The problem with that idea is--.

Wow, that was amazing.

Then I came up with the solution.

[music] What was that about?

Here's what I think about it.

Now we're talking.

West Tennessee PBS presents, Tennessee is Talking.

Let the conversation begin.

Thanks for joining the discussion.

I'm Peter Noll.

Today, Tennessee is Talking, is on location at the brand new Jackson Clinic-Baptist Memorial Outpatient Clinic.

We're going to find out how it came to be and more, and joining us to tell us all about it is Mark Allen, CEO of the Jackson Clinic, and Micah Ehmke.

-Did I say that right?

-Yes.

Associate administrator with Baptist Memorial.

Thank you both for joining us.

-Sure.

-Thanks for having us.

Let's start with, how did this par.. Well, Baptist and the Jackson Clinic have been offering unparalleled care to residents in West Tennessee for a long, long time.

Baptist and Jackson Clinic have been discussing ways that they can continue to do that.

One of the things, the options that came up was an outpatient me.. With the way that healthcare is going, more and more things are going to the outcare setting.

This looked like a perfect opportunity to collaborate, take the best of the Jackson Clinic providers, and the best that Baptist has to offer, how do we combine those and create a great team.

Mark, the outpatient services, what does that mean and what happens here?

Our outpatient services that we provide here include imaging.

We have a physician offices upstairs, where most of the specialists of the Jackson Clinic are.

A 148 total exam rooms?

148 total exam rooms.

That's a lot of examining.

It's a lot of examining.

You can do a lot of stuff here.

We can.

We have cardiology, we have urology, ENT, general surgery, podiatry, OBGYN, ophthalmology, we have our women's imaging centers here.

We have cardiac imaging here.

We have physical therapy.

We have retail pharmacy.

We have a full lab.

We have general X-ray, ultrasound, cardiac imaging from nuclear medicine, echocardiogram.

To me, it sounds like a one-stop shop.

Is there anything you guys don't do here?

Well, this isn't the place where we provide primary care.

This is more specialty and subspecialty care when our patients in West Tennessee need that.

Okay, what area are you serving?

Well, we really serve all of West Tennessee.

About 65% of our patients come from outside of Madison County to get services here, and so we would look at it really border to border and river to river is our service area.

Micah mentioned about outpatient surgery.

It's growing.

It's a lot of people, the healthcare industry is really shifting towards that.

For those that are watching and aren't familiar with how outpatient surgery works, what is it?

Outpatient surgery, as technology and procedures change, more and more procedures are able to be done on a same-day basis where you come in, you get prepped, you have the surgery, and then you're able to go home within 24 hours.

For those certain procedures, patients can come in and back when they do a knee replacement or something like that, they'd have to stay in the inpatient for three days.

What we're allowing our patients to do is they come into a convenient location like this, they can park right in front of the building.

They check in, they have their surgery, they get recover, and in a couple of hours, they're able to go home and recover right home in the comfort of their home.

Wow, you guys have eight surgery rooms?

We have eight eight ORs, eight operating rooms.

We have one vascular lab.

We have two GI labs, and we have 34 pre-.

and postoperative bays where they will recover and go in.

We've got eight post-anesthesia care units.

Wow.

That's after you have the surgery, you wake up?

Yes, you'd come in, the patient will come in, they'll check in, they'll go to the pre-post area.

Anesthesia will come in with them, check their history.

They'll work on the sedation piece, get them ready for the operating room.

We'll take them into the operating room.

The provider will come in, perform the surgery.

They'll take them to the post-anesthesia care unit, make sure everything's good.

They'll recover them for a little bit of time, then take them back out to the postoperative area, make sure everything's good to go.

Everything's good to go, we've got a discharge door where their family members can drive right up, pick them up, and take them home.

The parking is really easy.

It's huge.

Yes, part of our vision for this campus and this building was to have a warm welcoming campus where you could park right up against the campus, have multiple entrances along.

You notice the glass all on the front of the building, which is a way finding, so you know where you are when you're inside the building because you can see out.

The parking lot is built, so there are people-- I have older parents, and you have to drop them off as close as you can get to the door.

There was like, you can park that minivan vertical and you can still get around it.

It's very well-thought out.

We spend a lot of time and energy looking at that because we want to be here for our patients and our patients' comfort as well.

Mark, Jackson Clinic has been a name in the Madison County, Jackson Healthcare Industry for decades.

How did this play into your future?

Well, yes.

We were founded in 1950, so we have been here for decades.

As we look at how healthcare has changed over the years and the iterations of healthcare and how it's gone, we recognize healthcare is moving outpatient, patients want to spend their recovery time at home.

They want to be able to do things outside the walls of a hospital if they can possibly do so.

As we look at how do we meet the needs of our patients and meet the needs of the demands of the change in healthcare, having a facility like this where we can do those things is part of that.

It sits on Innovation Drive in Innovation Park, does that mean there's going to be other stuff coming, down the road, 10 years down the road?

There's a lot of land out here.

Yes, there's no plans for anything extra now.

We just moved into this beautiful facility and working and working through some of that, but there is plenty of opportunity and plenty of space.

If the healthcare landscape changes and we need other facilities to be able to care for our patients, then we have that space and ability to do so.

What would you say describes this facility in one sentence?

Oh, that's a great question.

Convenient.

I would say, probably would be a great word for it.

The patients can come here, they can see their provider on the second floor.

If they need diagnostics for more follow-up, they can do it on the first floor.

If they need surgery, come to find out, they can get it on the other side of the floor and then say, they need pharmacy or another one of their family members needs their drugs to be picked up, there's a pharmacy right here on the first floor that they can do that.

It's a one-stop shop for patients without-.

That's the word I was thinking.

having to utilize a parking garage and reduce their staff.

Most patients when they come in, they don't want to be there.

It's anxiety-inducing, it's stress-filled.

We want to reduce those barriers and reduce that stress as much as we can.

For those that have not been here yet, when you walk in, it's immediately calming.

I don't know if the colors you picked were part of that.

There's a Green Frog Coffee, which living in Jackson, there's two of those, so that immediately said, "Comfort, home."

It's very, I don't know, the lighting.

It is very calming.

Yes.

That was one of the big things with the waiting room, when you see how much glass is on the front there.

Just the benefit of natural light, right?

Who enjoys being in a dungeon?

Sure.

You've got so much natural light that peo.. can wade in and it's a calming effect as well.

It's like the little blue colors, blue just tends to naturally be a little bit more calming.

It was very well thought out by the designers and the people that came up with the building design.

Micah, Baptist Memorial is a name.

If you're in Memphis, it's one of the biggies and a lot of times for people in Jackson, they'll be referred to a specialist in, at Baptist Memorial in Memphis.

Is this place going to be now serving part of that need?

You won't have to go to Memphis?

Right now, the biggest thing is we've got a bunch of providers from the Jackson Clinic, we're providing services right here.

For a lot of those specialties, they don't need to go to Memphis, right?

If we've got those services here in Jackson, they can just utilize the second floor, meet those providers.

If they have a need for surgery they can come down to the first floor.

If they need a hospital, we've got Memphis, but we've also got hospitals in Carroll County and Tipton County and Union City.

Baptist Memorial is one of the nation's largest healthcare providers, correct?

It's largest in Mississippi now.

Yes, it has 24 total.

There's a lot of resources that we can pool from and we try to utilize our resources as much as we can to take care of our patients.

How many years did it take to come up with this idea concept?

We've been working on this concept since 2018.

Engaged the right developer and the right architect to do those kinds of things and then obviously, got very slowed down by the pandemic and so that kind-.

[crosstalk] -That pushed pause on a lot of things.

A lot of things, it really did.

It really took us from looking at the future and how do we deal with the future back into managing the day-to-day, but as we've come out of that pandemic, I think we've come out stronger and better.

We've got this project back on track, and so it's been in the works for a long time.

Was it kept real secret, like when they were building Disney World, they didn't tell anyone and they did like secret names of the company, buying up land?

Was it like that?

No.

It wasn't very secret.

We made the announcement that we were partnering with the Baptist to build this facility.

I don't remember what year that was, but it was way before we ever had a bulldozer dropped off to break down here.

I don't know how many hundreds of thousands of people drive past it every day, but it's like, we've watched it grow up from a little seedling to this.

-Sure.

-It was just amazing and it was fun.

You kept saying, "Oh, look at what they're putting up now," because every day you would drive past it.

It has been something that I think the community has really wanted to see happen because I think always having more choices, more healthcare closer to you is a good thing.

The support from the community has been incredible.

They've been extraordinarily nice.

I've got a lot of positive comments from patients who have come to the facility to see their doctor.

A lot of the patients that come to this facility every day to see their doctor have been seeing their doctor for many, many years and the outreach from the community, letting us know how excited and proud they are for us, it's been great.

Were there other areas that you looked at and you said, "Nah, it needs to be here because of the community there were, they want this?"

Other areas outside of Jackson?

Yes, like area on the other side of town or this location right here.

We look at where does the preponderance of our patients come from?

The two largest counties outside of the Memphis area are Madison and Gibson counties and the majority of our patients come from there.

If you look at the way Highway 45 runs, it runs from the north border of Tennessee to the south border of Tennessee and so we really use it like, an interstate to get around here.

Being prominently displayed here on Highway 45, in the center of where the preponderance of our patients come from was a big decision-maker.

Interestingly, if you look at where this location is, it's about 50 miles to the river on both ways and it's about 50 miles to the border of Tennessee at the Kentucky and Mississippi borders both ways.

It's almost perfectly the geographical center of West Tennessee right here where we're sitting today.

It is and it's one of the-- You drive past it and you think, "Oh, I can get there."

The first time I drove here, I was like, "I'm lost."

I'm like, heading to Humboldt and I'm like, "I missed the turnoff."

How do people get here?

What's the best way to tell people that don't have a phone-in?

If you're driving up north, you could go up, 45, take the Passmore Lane exit, take a left onto Passmore Lane, and then it'll be the first left where the large building is.

It's the first left, past the on-ramp, getting back onto the Bypass.

That's what happens to some patients and it's been some interesting efforts with Google Maps and Apple Maps to try to get this location right on their phones there.

You take the Passmore exit, if you're going north, take a left, don't take the first left because you'll get back on the expressway heading back to 45, back that, check.

That's correct.

Go past the next one and i.. -Stanley Decker.

--Stanley Decker thing.

That's exactly right.

If a person's like, "Oh my gosh, I want to come to .. How do they do that?

Do they go to their current doctor and say, "Hey, can we start going there?"

How would you say people should if they want to come here and use the facilities?

Sure.

We have, OB-GYNs here that they can see their OB-GYN, we have cardiologists.

They can see their cardiologist, optometry, and ophthalmology and they can come and see those providers.

Also, a referral from a primary care provider into one of the specialists that they may need.

We have that here and as Micah said earlier, it's a one-stop shop for a lot of things that those people need.

Micah, you mentioned the pharmacy.

Is that like just for people that are using the clinic or is that like, "Hey, when you get a prescription," they say, "What's your pharmacy?"

"Oh, I'm out that new one."

I'll let Mark answer that one as the Jackson Clinic Pharmacy.

Sure.

It's a full retail pharmacy.

It'll be a full retail pharmacy.

We will service the patients of the surgery center.

If they have prescriptions that they need to go home with, we can have those prescriptions filled and brought over to them for them to leave.

Anybody who wants to use the pharmacy, if the physician upstairs writes you a prescription and you want to pick that up before you leave, it's a full retail pharmacy, so we'll have all of the things that you can find in a pharmacy as well as some over-the-counter-type items.

Talk to me about how many people work here and if you need to hire people.

For the Baptist side, we've got roughly 40 FTEs and we're growing.

That'll continue to increase.

Right now, we're always looking for high-caliber people.

Where should they go if they're interested in working here?

I would go to, it's Google Baptist Careers and that should take us to the Baptist Career website.

We have probably, 40 to 45 providers in this building and then with our ancillary services and the support staff for those providers, another probably, 200 people that work here in this building.

Wow, because I know we work with Dr. D on the Jackson International [?]

and she was all excited.

She was just very excited about moving here.

It's been great.

The providers have loved it.

The patients have loved it.

The staff has loved it.

It's been a wonderful thing for patient .. as well as for the staff and physicians.

One thing that I was taught about healthcare is being familiar.

Don't be scared if a person that maybe is having a surgery planned here and they want to come out the day before-- Can just a stranger come in and use Green Frog Coffee and get a roll and a coffee, just to become familiar with the route, how to drive here.

-Of course.

-You don't need, there's not like a big security guard that's going to say, "Do you have an appointment today?"

No, there would be-- Once you go upstairs where all of the physici.. obviously there's a check-in area there that you would need to check in to go back, but to come in the front door and to enjoy Green Frog Coffee and or have a look around, go to the pharmacy, no, that's all very, very acceptable.

If patients have questions on their visit or their procedure or anything like that, we've got patient advocates that can walk them through whatever questions.

If they have questions, they can call 731 868 8000 and we'll get them.

-One more time, what's that number?

-731-868-8000.

Okay and they can just go to your individual websites, the Jackson Clinic, Baptist Memorial to find out more?

Absolutely.

Last question.

What is one thing in each of your minds about this one-of-a-kind place that most people don't know that you're most proud of?

Mark.

I think I'm the most proud of the design of the facility and how patient-centric that design is.

You've mentioned Green Frog Cafe several times as we look at some having a place for our patients to get refreshment, especially if they're waiting and have family members waiting for surgery or for our staff or for the other patients.

We looked at for somebody local, Green Frog is Jackson.

Green Frog is West Tennessee.

They have two locations Jackson, but they also have locations throughout West Tennessee.

It was a natural partnership for us there and I think that I'm proud of that as well.

I'm also proud of the services that we can provide here.

We have a comprehensive breast care clinic that we have here that is different from what we've had before.

I think that this facility has allowed us to do that, and I think that the care that the patient can get in those kind of areas is just one step better, which is what we try to do every day.

It's how do we provide better care for the people of West Tennessee?

You said the breast care center, that's new?

Right.

A comprehensive breast care center, that's we're looking at how do patient self-refer.

Do we have same-day diagnostics, same-day ultrasound, same-day stereotactic breast biopsies, and get the patient the result quicker?

When you said same day, if I had an appointment to get a mammography, what would be the schedule?

You come in and you get a mammography, a radiologist would read that, we'd let you know if they found something that was--.

That day?

They can let you know that day if .. something that is abnormal in there, and then they can bring you in and do-- Whether it's further imaging or whether it's something that required an ultrasounded biopsy or a stereotyped breast biopsy.

We can get that done.

All in the same day?

We can get that done in the same day.

Wow.

Wow.

Talk to me a little bit about why Baptist Memorial wanted to be in Madison County in Jackson.

Well, again, I think Baptist has been offering unparalleled care to West Tennessee for a long, long time, and Carroll County and Union City and Tipton County.

We just wanted to be able to continue to provide that high-quality care.

This is just another avenue and another access point that we can create where patients can come in, they can receive that high-quality care that's convenient and easily accessible.

We just want to be where the patients are.

If it's my family, I want to be able to make it convenient, I want them to be able to get the right care at the right time at the right place.

That's what we're here for and that's what we're trying to do.

Having built a lot of things, been part of these big plans that take years to create, things always change like, "Oh, we were hoping to have this, but there was a big rock we couldn't move, or it would've cost $10 billion to move, so we had to scrap that."

What are some of those things that you wish you could have happened or, "Oh, we foun.. and then we couldn't have the airport out back?"

I can't think of one.

If you remember what this piece of property looked like before, it was farmland.

It was a clean slate, so we didn't have any of those problems.

Fortunately, we had a really good design team, a really good architect team, and they took the time and energy, and effort it took to try to get it right.

I think that I'm glad that I don't really have an answer to that question right now.

Some of the supplies have been tough to get.

Probably the biggest thing that comes to mind for me is, even this, I think the fabric, this was choice number two, it turned out absolutely great, but I think that's the biggest problem that we had.

These chairs are deceptively comfortable.

-Yes.

-Yes.

Some waiting room furniture, let's be honest, they don't want you to wait too long.

These you sit down and it's a recliner like La-Z-Boy type.

Comfy.

Again, we want make it as convenient and easy and comfortable as we can for the patients.

That's what we got and we're thankful for it.

Who do you hope comes and utilizes?

The facility, the campus?

Well, this campus was built for all of the patients of West Tennessee.

Anybody who needs the services that we provide here, we would be happy for them to come here and to get those services.

Well, I want to thank both of you.

Sadly, we are out of time, but I do want to thank you both for joining us, for allowing us to come in and take a look around.

Sure.

Thank you for providing healthcare ser..

It's not always an easy job, but it is one that people do appreciate, and so I thank you both for joining us.

Yes, thanks for having us.

Thank you.

Remember, you can stream today's program on the PBS app.. westtnpbs.org, as well as the station's YouTube page.

We would like to keep the conversation going, and to do that, just follow us on social media.

I'm Peter Noll.

Thank you for watching.

Have a great day.

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