Writer: Joey Garrand
3 min read February 2022— Nashville is known as a hub for the corporate operations of some of the nation’s leading healthcare providers, which is reflected in the region’s quality of care. Leaders in Nashville discussed with Invest: the quality and growth of the local healthcare ecosystem.
Phil Mazzuca, CEO, Williamson Medical Center
This is one of the top healthcare environments I’ve ever been associated with. I’ve been in this business over 40 years, with responsibility for approximately 250 hospitals during that time, covering hospitals in 23 states over my career. Healthcare in Middle Tennessee is probably at the highest level I’ve ever seen. The market is known as a healthcare epicenter which attracts extremely talented people to Middle Tennessee. Having this talent pool helps us to innovate in ways that our peers aren’t able to do in other parts of the country. We have high-end quaternary facilities in our market performing state-of-the-art procedures in areas like transplant surgery, cancer care, and other sub-specialties. We all collaborate together despite being competitors. Williamson Medical Center has partnership relationships with other health systems in our region covering areas like pediatrics, heart care, and outpatient clinics. We share information with each other constantly in an effort to elevate healthcare in our communities. There are also quite a few opportunities for startup healthcare companies in Middle Tennessee, further fueling innovation and new technologies through local investments.
Michael Engel, Medical Director, Premier Medical Group
We have all the academic centers in Nashville and a plethora of medical services and sub specialists. While we are so grateful for that proximity, still, we want to keep things as convenient for our patients as possible by offering as much as we can locally. Even one of the neurosurgery practices out of Nashville is leasing some space in our office to be here in Clarksville-Montgomery County twice a week. We work very closely with our local hospital. It’s literally across the street from us, and there are significant and consistent levels of collaboration that go into what we’re both doing. With the pandemic, we really developed closer ties with our county health department. We’ve been one of the major sites for COVID testing in Montgomery County and have even been able to participate in the COVID vaccination efforts. Some good things have come about as a result of the pandemic, and one of those is it has tied this community closer together on the medical front. At the peak of things, we even had some of the dental offices that were unable to open, to share their PPE and other supplies with us. It has been really heartwarming to see how the community rallied together – it shows the strength of Clarksville-Montgomery County.
Chris Stirling, CEO, The Surgical Clinic
We have some really top-notch healthcare systems here. There is St. Thomas Health and we are the home base of HCA, the largest hospital company in the world. Their flagship hospital is here in Nashville. We have a lot of their hospitals in the region. Vanderbilt has such a great reputation for training physicians and for research. You’re not going to find many places in the country that provide the quality and the breadth of services that you can get in Nashville. Access is usually great, although during the pandemic it has gotten a little more difficult because staffing is an issue. As far as the specialties and the specialists that are here, the quality of treatment and the breadth of services you can get in Nashville, I don’t think you can really find that in many other places.
Kenny Boyd, COO, Maury Regional Health
Nashville is considered the healthcare capital of the world simply because of the number of healthcare businesses that are headquartered and located in Central Middle Tennessee; however, there is no direct correlation between the number of providers and the quality of their service. The residents of Southern and Central Middle Tennessee are very fortunate to have a broad range of exceptional healthcare providers whose main goal is to ensure quality and safety, as evidenced by the recognitions, rankings, and awards Maury Regional Health has achieved. We can take care of almost every patient need with services that include adult and neonatal intensive care, a cancer center and a vast array of surgical specialties.
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