Memphis has long been a hub for innovators. We live in a time when it’s essential to up our game, whether it’s for better health, a better community, or a better way of life and living. Memphis Magazine has been honoring those people and organizations who have looked not just to the next level but who reach for the stars. Our 2024 Innovation Awards — the 12th annual event — has found those thinkers and doers who have already made the city a better place to live. We had plenty of candidates to choose from, but these five people representing four organizations are working to make tomorrow an amazing time.
This year, we recognize BreAnna Boyd, founder and CEO of FeedWells; Dr. Evan S. Glazer at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center; Eric Mathews, CEO of Start Co.; and Susan Cooper and Megan Williams with Regional One Health.
Please attend the 2025 Innovation Awards Breakfast:
Wednesday, January 15, 2025 | 7:30 a.m. – 9:30 a.m. | 750 Cherry Rd, Memphis, TN 38117
photograph courtesy regional one health
Megan Williams (left) and Susan Cooper with a patient at Regional One Health.
Access to healthcare continues to be a major issue in America, and Regional One Health is on the frontline in Memphis. “We have some of the highest percentages of uninsured patients in the Mid-South,” says Megan Williams, director of complex care for Regional One. “We are unofficially the insurer. So when someone’s uninsured, we take on all of their cost of care as an organization.”
Susan Cooper, Regional One senior vice president and chief integration officer, says this has historically been a big problem for the hospital, so about six years ago, she set out to fix it.
photograph courtesy regional one health
Megan Williams, director of complex care at Regional One Health
“We believed that there was an opportunity to innovate around the care of the uninsured Shelby County residents who were frequent utilizers of our system,” she says. “We knew from our research that nationally, about 20 percent of the population [accrued] 80 percent of the cost. We also knew that it was well-reported that a person’s health is more than the healthcare you receive.”
Cooper’s research showed that an estimated 20 percent of health outcomes are linked to healthcare services; the remaining 80 percent stems from socioeconomic, environmental, and behavioral factors referred to as social drivers of health. “We believed that there was an opportunity to think differently about the care of the uninsured, and to design an innovative program to address both health and social needs. Our vision was ‘Every Memphian deserves great health.’”
ONE Health is the program Cooper and Williams designed to address the complex situation. When they analyzed their patient population, they discovered that a relatively small group of people were burdened with recurring issues that led them to seek help at the hospital.
“There are so many different reasons why some patients cost healthcare systems such an exorbitant amount of money, and we call those complex care patients,” says Cooper. “They exist in uninsured populations, and they exist in insured patient populations. We define complex care as having five ER visits in a year, or two inpatient admissions in a year. They have to be uninsured, as well as Shelby County residents, to be in our program.”
photograph courtesy regional one health
Susan Cooper, regional vice president and chief integration officer for Regional One Health
The needs of these complex care patients are many and varied, says Williams. “You can have cancer patients who are coming in frequently to the ER. You can have patients that have congestive heart failure repeatedly coming into the ER or getting admitted for chronic health conditions.”
There are also social and economic aspects to consider. “You have patients who are homeless and need somewhere to go,” says Williams. “You have patients who are coming to the ER because they don’t have a primary care doctor, so they need medication refills. You have people who are food-insecure and who are diabetics as well, and their blood sugar numbers are escalating or dropping based on having food at home. A lot of this program is centered around determining what is it that the patients need.”
ONE Health identifies the patients in need by data analysis, then reaches out to see if they need help. “This program is built on forming authentic relationships — meeting people where they are, without judgment,” says Williams. “Most times, some health or life event has led to a person becoming vulnerable. Once we build the relationship, we develop plans of care from the individual’s point of view, and begin working on the identified issues and goals. The primary needs are most often unrelated to healthcare, such as lack of insurance, housing instability, food insecurity, lack of transportation, unable to purchase meds, or interpersonal violence.”
ONE Health has helped more than 1,000 people since 2018. The results have been striking. One hundred percent of participants now have a primary-care physician. More than 58 percent have gained health insurance, 70 percent are no longer food insecure, and 61 percent now have stable housing. More than 160 patients who were unemployed now have a job.
“We designed the program to improve the health of this population,” says Cooper. “What surprised us is that we have been able to demonstrate that if you address the social drivers of health, health not only improves, but you bend the financial cost curve. Doing the right thing results in a decreased cost of care while improving a person’s quality of life. This was a great unintended consequence of the program.”
Cooper says she believes their innovative approach, which includes both social factors as well as health factors, has much to teach the industry as a whole. “Healthcare delivery is changing at a rapid pace, especially coming out of Covid,” she says. “If we do not innovate, we will not be able to keep up with the pace of change, but more importantly, we may miss the opportunity to improve the health of our patients and our community.”
