Tennova Healthcare to Reconfigure Knoxville Operations

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (Jan. 23, 2018) - Tennova Healthcare today announced a new strategic plan to enhance care and the experience of patients and physicians at its Knoxville area hospitals. Under the plan, Tennova will reconfigure the inpatient services offered at North Knoxville Medical Center, Physicians Regional Medical Center and Turkey Creek Medical Center and develop new outpatient centers in the Knoxville area. It will no longer build a replacement hospital for Physicians Regional Medical Center.

“As we reevaluated our strategy for Knoxville, we determined that strengthening our existing facilities and pursuing a new outpatient strategy will allow us to better meet the needs and preferences of today’s healthcare consumers and support the way our physician partners prefer to practice,” said Tony Benton, chief executive officer for Tennova Healthcare in East Tennessee. “We have an outstanding medical staff and compassionate employees, and we are excited to move forward with them to advance our care and services. Given the changes in the healthcare industry, building a new hospital is unnecessary and would not be prudent for our health system and the Knoxville community. By making these adjustments we will ultimately improve the operations of our Knoxville area hospitals.”

Since Tennova Healthcare was awarded a Certificate of Need to build a replacement hospital off Middlebrook Pike, the healthcare landscape has continued to evolve, and the shift to delivering care in more efficient and cost-effective outpatient settings has accelerated.

“This is the right way to build on the care we’ve been providing to the Knoxville community for years,” said Doug Leahy, M.D., chairman of the Board of Trustees for Tennova’s Knoxville facilities. “The board is confident this plan, developed by our local leadership team, will provide a more patient-centered delivery system that emphasizes quality and efficiency of care.”

Reconfiguration Plans

In the months ahead, Tennova will begin to consolidate the majority of its Knoxville area acute inpatient services to the North Knoxville and Turkey Creek Medical Centers where it will renovate existing infrastructure to support care for more patients in targeted service lines. As additional capacity becomes available at North Knoxville and Turkey Creek, Tennova will transition several services from Physicians Regional to those facilities, creating a specialized Physicians Regional campus focused on a select group of services.

Specifically, the childbirth services currently offered at Turkey Creek will relocate to Physicians Regional – which already performs more than 1,600 deliveries per year and offers a neonatal intensive care unit – making the hospital Tennova’s centralized location for childbirth services. Physicians Regional will also continue to provide inpatient physical rehabilitation, inpatient psychiatric care and emergency room services. It will sustain all other service lines until additional capacity becomes available at the other hospitals.

North Knoxville and Turkey Creek Medical Centers will maintain all other existing services and immediately begin renovation projects to accommodate additional surgical cases. North Knoxville will strengthen its cancer care services, and it will add cardiac catheterization laboratories and operating rooms to help absorb the cardiac care and orthopedic, general and vascular surgeries currently performed at Physicians Regional.

Turkey Creek will convert its existing obstetrical beds to general medical/surgical beds, create additional operating rooms and add intensive care unit beds to accommodate increased and more complex general and cardiovascular surgical cases from Physicians Regional.

“Narrowing our services at Physicians Regional will allow us to concentrate our resources on a few, core services at that facility and reduce operational challenges associated with the building’s age and physical plant,” Benton said. “This focus is critical to strengthening our network so we can continue to invest in the high-quality services and outpatient facilities we know patients prefer.”

Outpatient Strategy

Concurrent with the inpatient services reconfiguration, Tennova will work with local physician partners to pursue opportunities to develop new outpatient care sites. The health system is actively exploring development of outpatient centers — including freestanding emergency centers, ambulatory surgery centers and physician clinic offices — to better serve patients. The health system will announce those developments in the future as plans are finalized.

Tennova will retain the Middlebrook property and consider other opportunities for the site that align with the strategic plan.

Next Steps

The Knoxville market changes will begin immediately and occur over the next 24 months. During that time, the hospitals will provide advanced notice of specific changes to affected patients and the broader community. In addition, hospital administration will work with clinicians and staff whose services will be transferred to other locations to minimize disruptions for those individuals.

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