Regional One Health needs millions to update facilities for Memphis residents

It’s the only level 1 trauma center in the mid-south, one of the busiest in the nation. It holds the only verified burn center in a four-state region. And, every year, nearly 5,000 babies are born at the center, nearly one-fourth of which are high-risk.

But the buildings that make up Regional One Health — a nonprofit organization which leases its facilities and land from Shelby County Government — are aged, many past the useful lifespan for a healthcare building.

The system’s power plant is 75 years old, buildings do not meet current seismic standards and hospital officials say layout and design are not compatible with 21st century medicine.

“One of the worst things you can do is put bad habits into a new facility and think a new facility is going to change anything, so we’ve done that work and now it’s time to merge the work that we’ve done, a new facility to deliver care for Memphis, Shelby County and the mid-South,” said Reginald Coopwood, CEO of Regional One.

County could fund first two phases of replacement

Regional One has been through a transformation in recent years.

Previously known as The Regional Medical Center, or simply “The MED,” it rebranded as Regional One Health in 2014 with a family of services including the acute care hospital, rehabilitation hospital, outpatient surgery center and more.

That was just the culmination of years of work changing the “inside” of the hospital from a time when news headlines warned of “fragile” financial conditions and “Life or Death for The MED”

In 2010, the center renovated med/surg to all private rooms. In 2011, the center created a strategic plan for 2012-2015. Work continued over the years with additional accreditations, openings of new centers, campuses and partnerships and in 2020 a focus on working with the University of Tennessee Health Science Center.

Now, officials at Regional One are pushing for Shelby County, which owns the hospital’s aging infrastructure, to commit to funding at least the first and second phases of a campus revitalization.

The need is dire, they say, if Regional One is to continue serving as a place “this community depends on,” Coopwood said.

In 2017, Regional One Health first made a request of Shelby County for capital funding for new buildings. Later, in June 2022, A2H Inc. completed an analysis of the facility conditions and seismic risk of the one million-square-foot properties in midtown Memphis owned by the Shelby County Healthcare Corporation.

That assessment found that the cost to replace the buildings will be $820 million.

But Regional One, so far, has only asked Shelby County to cover the costs of the first two phases of a replacement.

The first phase would be a new women and infants center and a power plant. That would include antepartum and postpartum rooms, c-section operating rooms, neonatal intensive care beds and more.

The second phase would be an acute care tower, including emergency and trauma services and an operating room replacement. Enveloped in those services would be medical/surgical patient rooms, hybrid shock trauma rooms, a bed intensive care unit, general operating rooms, ortho/neuro operating rooms and a post anesthesia care unit.

“This community, this region depends on us to be available for trauma care and we need a trauma center that has the size and capability to handle the type of trauma that we’re seeing, the high velocity motor vehicle accidents, falls, the sprains, gunshot wounds, all those things that are now part of our current culture, we need a trauma center that is set up to be able to handle that on a regular basis,” Coopwood said.

Originally, Regional One estimated the cost of those two phases at $315 million. Shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, they updated the estimate for inflationary costs, taking it to $350 million. They have not updated it since to today’s costs, since “what we need in the building hasn’t changed,” Coopwood said.

County commissioners, who will ultimately approve funding — whether through a tax increase or another means — for Regional One are aware that the dollar figure is nebulous.

In a vote in which they directed the Shelby County Mayor’s Administration to provide them with a plan for how to fund new buildings at Regional One, the last commission stripped the resolution of any specific dollar amount, leaving it simply saying “an estimated amount.”

The cost of the third phase — including the critical care med/surg tower, with the replacement of 200+ med/surg beds and 40-50 intensive care unit beds—could come from public and private sources, such as the state, federal government and philanthropic donations, officials have said.

Finding millions a 'highest priority'

Regional One’s trauma center was originally built for 3,000-4,000 admissions. This year, however, it is tracking about 7,000 admissions.

Inadequate floor-to-floor heights mean there’s not room between floors to fit all the wiring needed for present-day medical technology.

And, with Memphis in the New Madrid seismic zone, the most seismically active region in the Central and Eastern United States, there are concerns about the structural integrity of the very buildings where people would need to go if disaster struck.

Continuing to use the current buildings would mean a cost of greater than $1.1 billion, with some of that money going to seismic retrofitting, according to the same assessment.

Ultimately, finding the millions needed to create a new Regional One is "one of our highest priorities as we go into a new term with the new commission," said Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris.

"But the question is how do we pay for it, obviously," Harris said. "It’s tough. We operate at a budget deficit. We’ve had a lot of federal resources to help us get through the budget deficit over the last few years, but the hard conversation is coming.”

Options for finding funding could involve raising the county's property tax, which Harris has never before advocated, or raising the county's car registration fees, something Harris previously suggested as a way to raise funding for the Memphis Area Transit Authority, a plan that ultimately failed.

If the county finds and commits the funding to Regional One, it would be "the largest local government project in the history of our area," Harris said.

“I am determined to try to get this done, because I do think healthcare access is a top concern," Harris said. “If it has the potential to improve the lives of our everyday residents, I’m all over it, and I believe Regional One has the potential to improve the lives of our everyday residents. It’s a worthwhile topic.”

Katherine Burgess covers county government and religion. She can be reached at katherine.burgess@commercialappeal.com or followed on Twitter @kathsburgess.

This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: Regional One needs funding to serve Memphis community