MMS Fall Quarterly 2020

Volume 24, Number 3

Fall 2020

Implicit Bias in Healthcare Plus: Meet your new physician liaison

For over 100 years, Semmes Murphey Clinic has been a leader in neurological and spinal care. Our dedicated team of doctors provides cutting edge treatment options with compassionate, personal care.

SEMMES-MURPHEY.COM CALL (901) 522-7700

Volume 24, Number 3

Fall 2020

The mission of the Memphis Medical Society is to unite the physicians of Memphis and Shelby County into an organization to promote the highest quality of medical practice and the health of our citizens.

Editorial Thomas C. Gettelfinger, M.D. Managing Editor Allison Cook 2020 Board of Directors President Danielle Hassel, M.D. President-Elect Andrew Watson, M.D. Vice President Christopher M. Pokabla, M.D. Secretary Lisa Usdan, M.D. Treasurer David L. Cannon, M.D. Immediate Past President Jimmie Mancell, M.D. Board Members W. Clay Jackson, M.D., DipTh Christopher Jackson, M.D. Walter Rayford, PhD, M.D., MBA Paul Tackett, M.D. Lindi Vanderwalde, M.D. Raymond R. Walker, M.D. Catherine Womack, M.D. Ex-Officio Board Members LaTonya Washington, M.D., President of Bluff City Medical Society Eric Gibson, President of MidSouth MGMA

In this issue

Editorial

3

President’s Letter

5

Hospital Updates

6

MedTemps

8

Member Spotlight: John Braun, M.D.

11

Special Feature: Bias in Healthcare

12

Research

14

Your Benefits: New physician liasion

15

Finance Q&A

17

Legislative Update

19

The Memphis Medical Society, 1067 Cresthaven Road Memphis, TN 38119 901-761-0200 CEO/Executive Vice President, Clint Cummins Director, Communications & Marketing, Allison Cook Finance Director, Leah Lumm Physician Liaison, Cara Azhar Director, Healthcare Staffing, Cailyn Bautista Lillard MedTemps Administrative Coordinator, Katie Yaun

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Editorial

The Fruits of War

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Editorial

This is no exception

Medical and surgical advances come with special urgency during wartime.

The same is true about the world’s response to epidemic COVID-19.

The world has mobilized, every where and every how, in warlike fashion.

We have been through epidemics before.

They are actually business as usual.

The most infamous epidemic here in Memphis was the Yellow Fever epidemic of 1878. Many health care workers including doctors died. Response to the epidemic resulted in improved public health, the paving of roads, a new sewage system. The mode of transmission, the Aedes aegypti mosquito, was finally proven in 1901 by a team led by Walter Reed. It wasn’t until 1927 that the virus, a single strand RNA flavivirus, was isolated from a sick man in Ghana and until 1937 that a vaccine was developed, by Max Theiler, who won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1951 for that work.

Surely the next most consequential epidemic was the Flu outbreak of 1918. The causative agent, another but different type of RNA virus, In-fluenza A, wasn’t identified until 1933, but in five or so years that discovery led to vaccines, some of which were developed by Jonas Salk, yes of Polio vaccine fame, in time to vaccinate soldiers for WW2.

That virus, H1N1, has persisted in human populations for over a hundred years. Vaccination is still required yearly; there is no universal vaccine.

Now we are at war with another RNA virus, SARS-CoV-2. Vaccines were developed within nine months, released in December in the United States.

If Dr. Richard Webby at St. Jude is correct, this virus will be with us forever, settle down like the common cold or flu.

But that’s all abstract.

Taking a sample week of positive COVID-19 tests in Memphis in December, the biggest category had to do with work status: among all cases 74% were employed, 26% unemployed. Earlier In the fall, Jane Roberts of The Daily Memphian reported “nurses, aides taking brunt of new COVID-19 cases.” Depending on the week, health care workers were the largest category of positive cases among workers, for example 22%, while making up 16% of the work force.

We obviously owe a great debt to all those who continued to work, in whatever capacity, and among workers, to health care personnel in particular.

There was no easily obtainable information on doctors, nurses or health aides who had died locally of COVID-19, but Wendy Likes, dean of the UTHSC College of Nursing, reported in the Commercial Appeal in December that nationally 405 RNs had done so.

So no exception.

We have learned much from this war.

And there is still so much more to learn.

Thomas C. Gettelfinger, M.D. 3

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President’s Letter

We’re in the final quarter of the year and wow, has 2020 flown by. Seems like yesterday that everything was shutting down due to COVID-19. Even though the community has “opened back up,” we continue to face serious challenges with the virus and the escalation of cases. As physicians, we remain in the battle and strive to keep our patients, our families, and ourselves safe. Additionally, influenza season is here and presents its own dangers. The holiday season is also upon us and there will be temptations to gather with family and friends. Let’s continue the necessary safety precautions and education of the public. Keep in mind, we physicians should also practice what we’re preaching. MMS encourages all of us to push through and keep up the fight for as long as it takes to protect our community.

On another note, we are preparing for political transitions across the country. It is essential that Memphis and Tennessee physicians stay engaged with our local legislators. If you’ve never reached out to your designated state representative or senator, please give it a try. Even an email can sway a major decision regarding health care. Every contact from a physician makes an impact and they depend on our input to make informed decisions. To stay up to date on what potential laws are affecting our practices and public health, you can always go to www.mdmemphis.org for everything pertinent to physicians and patients.

Finally, I am happy to share some positivity. Despite all the distractions, MMS is still pushing to establish goals that were set in January. Recently, the MMS Board of Directors led its first Phone-A-Thon for membership recruitment. We are excited to welcome colleagues who joined during this effort and hope all of you will continue to invite others. More members in our society translates into larger representation within the Tennessee Medical Association and raises our voices on behalf of matters that affect west Tennessee. Additionally, we’re modernizing by moving forward with the bylaws review and updates, as well as ongoing strategic planning. Though in this climate we’ve been challenged to establish the new partnerships as I had envisioned, we are fortunate to have one major public health development involving the state that we hope to announce soon.

More details to come!

“Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.”

---Archbishop Desmond Tutu

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Hospitals

Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare cardiologists combat potential COVID-19 side effect.

Studies show that COVID-19 has caused a spike in cases of atrial fibrillation (AFib), commonly called an irregular heartbeat. It’s a condition that already affects 8 million Americans each year.

When untreated, AFib may lead to heart failure and can increase a patient’s chance of stroke by as much as 500 percent. This is especially a concern in Shelby County where cardiovascular disease and stroke are the numberone cause of death. Dr. Rajesh Kabra of Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare says patients with AFib are “more likely to be hospitalized, more likely to be in the ICU.” With a procedure called atrial fibrillation ablation, Dr. Kabra uses a catheter to cauterize the tissue that creates a faulty heartbeat.

Marathon runner Donny Scallions was diagnosed with AFib after experiencing an increased heart rate while running. “I was getting heart rates that spiked up to 250. Which is excessively high,” said Scallions.

Dr. Kabra performed the ablation surgery on Scallions, who spent just over 24 hours in the hospital.“We have even started discharging the patients the same day to minimize their potential exposure to any infections,” Dr. Kabra says.

Scallions fully recovered and has even returned to running marathons. “I’ve actually set personal records on all my distances since,” Scallion says.

Baptist Clinical Research Institute begins new COVID-19 treatment trial Baptist Memorial Health Care was one of the first health care organizations in the country to participate in a new COVID-19 clinical trial with INmune Bio Inc., a clinical-stage biotechnology company focused on developing treatments that target the immune system’s ability to fight disease.

Baptist Clinical Research Institute led Baptist’s participation in the double-blind, randomized, placebocontrolled Phase 2 clinical trial, which is evaluating the effectiveness of Quellor, a medication designed to potentially prevent the progression of pulmonary complications and inflammation from COVID-19.

“Quellor is designed for patients who are at a higher risk of experiencing more severe symptoms from COVID-19,” said Dr. Jeffrey Wright, pulmonologist at Baptist Memorial Hospital-Memphis. “We’re hopeful that this treatment will prevent the progression of acute symptoms while helping us care for some of our most vulnerable COVID-19 patients.”

The treatment consists of one to two doses through injections, depending on the patient’s condition after the first dose. To qualify for the trial, patients must have been admitted to the hospital with COVID-19, be 60 years old or older and have preexisting conditions, including hypertension and diabetes. For more information, go to www.baptistonline.org/services/research/baptist-clinical-research-institute.

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Hospitals

Regional One Health offering new incisionless focused ultrasound treatment Regional One Health is now offering a new, incisionless treatment for medication-refractory essential tremor and tremor-dominant Parkinson’s patients. The treatment uses focused ultrasound technology developed to treat deep within the brain with no surgical incision, implants, anesthesia, or ionizing radiation. The incisionless treatment is performed by Aaron Bond, MD, neurosurgeon at Semmes Murphey exclusively at Regional One Health’s East Campus Imaging Center.

“Focused ultrasound guided by magnetic resonance imaging provides patients suffering from debilitating tremor with an incisionless treatment option, which can be performed on an outpatient basis with short recovery time,” said Tony Edwards, director of imaging and radiology services at Regional One Health. “This noninvasive technology gives our patients more treatment options as they decide with their physicians the best course to get back to a more independent and active lifestyle.”

The treatment uses sound energy to target and precisely treat a small spot in the thalamus, considered to be responsible for causing tremor. The result for many patients is immediate improvement in their hand tremor with minimal complications reported.

“Patients often assume their tremor is a sign of old age, and they don’t realize there are treatments out there which can potentially eliminate their tremors,” said Dr. Bond. “I have been involved with focused ultrasound since the early days of the first research cases. Medical technology has advanced greatly, and we now have several years of data that shows this treatment to be a safe and effective option for many patients.”

Saint Francis Healthcare continues to grow its robotics program.

Saint Francis Bartlett recently celebrated the addition of the Globus Excelsius GPS robotic guid-ance system for spinal implants and surgical procedures and Saint Francis Mem-phis added a third daVinci Xi surgical system to its fleet of daVinci robots.

The colorectal surgical program at Saint Francis is benefitting from the addition of another daVinci Xi. As with any surgery one of the goals is for the patient to be as comfortable as possible in terms of post-op pain to shorten the recovery period and allow patients to return to daily activities. Through the use of the daVinci Xi, Saint Francis colorectal surgeons Joshua Katz and Moriah Wright are performing procedures that allowed a patient to manage post-op pain without narcotics, in-creasing the patient’s satisfaction because of a shortened stay and recovery to ac-tivities of normal life.

Doctors Katz and Wright also performed one of the area’s first robotic assisted to-tal abdominal colectomy. The patient had severe chronic constipation, had failed conservative management and had severe compromise of quality of life. The pa-tient was discharged home on postoperative day 2.

The benefits of robotic-assisted surgery are providing patients with the opportuni-ty for less pain and faster recovery. Other robotic offerings at Saint Francis Healthcare include the O-arm, Mazor and Mako for joint replacement, and spinal procedures.

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MedTemps

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Learn more at www.mdmemphis.org

Money & Medicine Partnership with Rise Foundation

Memphis Medical Society’s Money and Medicine initiative recently expanded through a partnership with MedTemps and Rise Foundation to offer financial education to MedTemp employees through Rise’s Common Cents program. This program teaches its participants financial basics and how to save for important, large purchases, such as a home.

MedTemps employee Tequita Todd took part in the program, and was also featured on Fox 13 Memphis explaining the challenges of budgeting for a busy healthcare professional. Tequita said, “It’s pretty hard to budget,” she said. “It’s hard to save because someone is always needing something, either gas, food, clothes, pampers. But thanks to the Rise Foundation program, I have a better understanding of budgeting and how to plan for my money and how to focus on a savings plan.”

Some participants in the program may ultimately become eligible for a program that matches their savings 2:1 with the goal of purchasing a home, car, or starting their own business. The program is supported by local banks.

“We plan to expand this as an offering to our member practices,” says MMS CEO Clint Cummins. “Financially stable employees are a win for everyone. We need to invest in them.”

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PPE

QI

Member Updates

Society expands to offer PPE during pandemic

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Member Benefits

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Member Spotlight

Member Spotlight John Braun, M.D., with VIP

John Braun, M.D. grew up in Arkansas where he completed college and medical school at the University of Arkansas. He then spent a year at the University of Chicago in a surgical internship before completing a radiology residency at Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh. He subspecialized in Vascular and Interventional Radiology (VIR) at the University of Pittsburgh where he also performed his fellowship.

He joined Vascular Interventional Physicians in July, 2019.

In February, he began performing non-surgical creation of arteriovenous (AV) fistulas. “I believe we were the first physicians in the state of Mississippi to perform wavelinq AV fistula creation,” he says. “Based on my conversation with the Board medical device company, we are currently the highest volume user in the Mid-South metro.”

Dr. Braun’s goal is to offer dialysis access to patients that is more reliable and safer than the current interventions offered. “Currently the majority of patients who have arteriovenous fistulas created will have them done through standard surgical techniques,” he says.

“Unfortunately standard surgery comes with a high complication and failure rate. The procedure we offer has been shown to provide fistulas, which are safer to create and have a higher chance of working for the patient.”

Dr. Braun says he went into Interventional Radiology (IR) because of the wide range of technologies and variation in procedures offered by the specialty. “IR is not limited to a specific organ system and so my week can be extremely varied in the type of patients I encounter and procedures I perform,” he says. “The specialty is also driven by innovation so I constantly have to learn new devices and techniques. This challenge and continuous procedural evolution keeps the job engaging for me.”

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Feature

Special Feature

Implicit Bias in Healthcare: Provider and Patient Considerations

By LaTonya B. Washington, M.D. We are living in trying times. COVID-19 and racial injustices have us facing two pandemics. Throughout this time of social distancing and isolation Americans have slowed down enough to recognize and feel the disparities that have long existed in our society. COVID-19 didn’t create social disparities, but it certainly unmasked them, revealing the disproportionate effects on persons of color. The killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor were not the first instances of social injustice, but yet another example of the diminished value of Black lives in this country. The commonality of bias plays a part in both of these pandemics.

Bias is simply defined as a prejudice in favor of or against one thing, person, or group compared with another.

Explicit bias are biases we are aware of on a conscious level while implicit bias refers to attitudes or stereotypes that affect our understanding, actions, and decision in an unconscious manner. Everyone contributes and is influenced by bias in the healthcare system including physicians, nurses, hospitals and health systems, managed care plans, and governmental entities. Based on this overwhelming reach, it is easy to see that bias can shorten and diminish the quality of life for persons of color and other disadvantaged people groups.

This history of bias against persons of color in healthcare systems in the United States trace back to the days of slavery. Slaves of African descent were considered inferior and often unable to obtain medical care unless sought by their owners. When medical care was provided, it was most often for the purpose of maintaining the integrity of the physical ability to work or for childbirth lending to furthering the workforce and property ownership since the children of slaves were considered property. During the days of Jim Crow, hospitals and health systems were segregated with ill-equipped hospitals and wards for Black patients leading to increased morbidity and mortality as compared to Whites. The history of unconsented medical experimentation contributes to implicit biases and distrust held by patients of racial and ethnic minority groups against the medical community. The most well known is the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male.

This study denied study subjects, all Black men of which two-thirds had known syphilis, treatment with penicillin despite it being identified as the treatment of choice in 1945 leading to the spread of disease, severe complications due to untreated syphilis, and death. Another well known instance of unconsenting subjects involves gynecological surgeries performed without anesthesia on enslaved Black women by the “father of modern gynecology,” Dr. J. Marion Sims, who was widely celebrated for his contributions to medicine with endowed chairmanships and statues that were recently removed in 2018.

Implicit bias stems from one’s personal knowledge of a people group influenced by one’s upbringing, exposures, media, and societal messaging. These influences trigger stereotypes and biased perceptions and influence decisions and conduct. Often persons of color are associated with criminality, animals, drug use/abuse, and hypersexuality. These stereotypes influence decision makers in public policy and health policy.

These biases translate to healthcare delivery as well. For healthcare professionals these unconscious beliefs lead to forming opinions prior to seeing or physically interacting with patients. It can lead to leading providers diminishing symptoms, missing diagnoses, and potentially withholding complex medical information due to concern for the patient’s inability to understand the gravity of their medical condition.

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Implicit biases aren’t just an issue in the delivery of care, many medical students and residents report instances of bias involving admittance to medical school and during training via comments from professors, attendings, ancillary staff, and other students or medical trainees.

Patients can be the perpetrators of and can be affected by these prejudices. Patients who perceive bias from their health care providers are unlikely to have healthy relationships with their physicians and nursing staff.

This may lead to the patient withholding pertinent information from the history leading to missed or delayed diagnoses and also to the patient being distrustful of the medical directives leading to nonadherence to the prescribed treatment plan. Patients often display racial and ethnic biases regarding the intellectual stature of training of the physician and whether the physician was trained in the US or abroad. Furthermore, some Black patients hold anti-Black physician biases due to the feelings that White physicians deliver better care influenced by the “White is right” principle. As a recipient of both explicit and implicit bias from patients of various racial and ethnic groups, it’s important to identify and manage these actions appropriately such that they don’t impact the care provided to the patient.

Identifying bias is paramount to improving healthcare delivery for persons of color and other disadvantaged people groups. The Implicit Association Test (IAT) is the tool or choice for neuroscientists and social psychologists to measure unconscious attitudes. Testing to evaluate implicit bias in race, ethnicity, skin tone, sexuality, gender, religion, age, and disability are available on Harvard’s Project Implicit website. Research using IAT demonstrated startling results showing pro-White and anti-Black selections when determining who is prosecuted in the criminal justice system, who is selected for a jury, hiring and promotion decisions, and which misbehaving students are disciplined in schools. Implicit biases affect behaviors and can affect a physician’s conduct towards patients including therapies delivered and care offered. Published studies have shown that implicit bias affects the pain assessment and management in Black patients due to the belief that Black patients experience less pain. Furthermore, a recently published study supports physician and patient racial concordance was associated with significant improvement in mortality for Black infants with increased benefits in centers with challenging births and those hospitals delivering more Black infants.

Bias definitely affects many aspects of healthcare delivery. It’s important that both patients and providers work to manage and eliminate stereotypes and barriers to insure the interactions are meaningful and productive to deliver efficient and effective care with improved outcomes for disparate people groups.

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Reseach

Pandemic Partnership

Regional One Health, UTHSC partner on post-COVID-19 clinic Regional One Health and the University of Tennessee Health Science Center have established a post-COVID-19 clinic to provide specialized outpatient follow-up care to individuals who have tested positive for the virus and may be experiencing long-term symptoms after recovery. The clinic at Regional One Health will also be available to individuals who have tested positive for COVID-19 and are asymptomatic but interested in learning about research studies to develop overall understanding of the virus and its residual effects.

The clinic will serve as a follow-up care option for COVID-19 patients, said G. Nicholas Verne, MD, chair of the Department of Medicine in the College of Medicine at UTHSC, who is one of the organizers, along with Tish Towns, FACHE, senior vice president and chief administrative officer at Regional One Health. The clinic will be led by Cyrilyn Walters, MD, MPH, FACP, FAAP, medical director for ambulatory services at Regional One Health.

“This clinic, together with the inpatient COVID unit at Regional One Health, will establish a COVID medical home that will provide longitudinal follow up and care for patients who have had COVID-19,” Dr. Verne said.

“Patients who have been diagnosed with COVID, either in the community or at Regional One Health, and have been hospitalized or are out of the hospital, will have the opportunity to seek follow-up care there.”

The COVID-19 Follow-up Clinic offers both in-clinic visits in addition to telehealth visits. Onsite appointments are held at Regional One Health Outpatient Center, 880 Madison Avenue. Patients should call (901) 545-6969, Option #2, and then Option #1. Referrals should be sent to (901) 545-6092, and note “COVID Follow Up” as the reason for referral.

UTHSC faculty who practice at Regional One Health, a clinical practice partner hospital with UTHSC, will provide the longitudinal or long-term follow-up care in the clinic. “Because this is a multidisciplinary practice site, there are doctors who have expertise and experience in various fields and have available study options for patients who may have long-term quality-of-life issues following infection,” Dr. Verne said. For example, individuals experiencing pulmonary or other issues post-COVID-19 could get treatment from specialists in those fields. They would also have access to research available on post-COVID-19 residual effects.

“We are delighted to partner with Regional One Health in caring for patients who were infected with COVID-19,” said Scott Strome, MD, executive dean of the UTHSC College of Medicine. “This clinic is designed to diagnose and treat the litany of COVID-19-associated symptoms and to serve as a resource for our entire community.”

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Your Liaison

Your Benefits

Cara Azhar expands role as Physician Liaison Recently, Memphis Medical Society reorganized its approach to supporting physicians in light of the ever-changing challenges and needs physicians face. We want to bring concierge-level service to physicians from the day they enter the community to the day they leave. Cara will be the go-to for all things membership. She is supported by MMS CEO Clint Cummins and Marketing and Communications Director Allison Cook.

Here is a little more about her.

Family: I am blessed with a beautiful little family at home: my husband Amir, our 6-year-old daughter Parker, and our 2-year-old Goldendoodle Leo. Hometown: Paragould, Arkansas Experience: Former Executive Director of REALTOR® association, Internal Communications Director for pharma startup.

What are you most excited about in this role?

I’m most looking forward to making connections with our members and building new relationships. MMS has so many members each with their own story. I look forward to hearing those stories and being a part of them.

What new or improved programs do you hope to implement soon?

Although we have several programs and plans on our whiteboards, the first thing I’m working on is our ‘Membership Process.’ How do we make our members feel like a part of their organization, whether they’re new members, newly engaged members, or longtime members? From the first day they join or the first time they hear our name – I plan to connect to them and let them know that not only is MMS here for them, but I’m personally here to help them navigate our programs and services.

What is something you want everyone to know about you?

My mother is a Kindergarten teacher. So, I was raised by a kind, caring, crafty, fun woman who always made every moment a teachable moment. I think I will always embody that side of my mother. From my first memories, she taught me that when faced with a challenge, it’s best to meet the challenge head-on, with the joy and courage of a Kindergartener. Those kids face challenges every day that we adults take for granted (especially in 2020) - but they face them courageously and with a smile. However, she never let me forget that sometimes it’s ok if your guard falls, and you cry on the playground. Wipe those tears and figure out how to do it differently, or better, next time.

I’m a wife, mother, and strategic communications specialist, and I still face challenges like a Kindergartener.

Now, I get to stand by others on the playground, hear their stories, and sometimes offer a tissue – and I am so grateful for that.

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Your Benefits

Foresight in 2020.

We believe that your malpractice insurance team should be ready and available when you need them most. SVMIC is built on this kind of reliable and dedicated relationship, so you can focus on your practice and we can focus on protecting it.

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QI

Financial Q&A

Financial Q&A Protecting your investment portfolio

Q. Financial planning before the COVID pandemic was always something I put off just because I was so focused on my practice and my family. During the past few months, I made more time to examine my priorities, and I decided to take an active approach about updating my financial plan. My financial adviser and I are planning to meet soon to discuss these issues, but what can I do in the meantime to jump start the process.

A. A proactive approach is always a good start. If you developed a financial plan recently, your adviser may only need to update the plan to reflect your current situation. An older plan with no updates will probably not be very effective, so plan to start the planning process over with your adviser.

In the interim, here are some suggestions. Start with an exam of your cash flow situation. Fluctuations in income during the pandemic have been a struggle for many, so updating and sticking to a budget is an excellent practice for these uncertain times. Creating or increasing the amount in your emergency fund is also a good idea. Usually, a three- to six-month supply of living expenses is adequate, but during this period you might want to consider a larger cushion. If debt is an issue, the low interest rate environment makes it a great time to consolidate unsecured debt or refinance a mortgage.

From an investment point of view, do not let the volatility in the market scare you away from continuing your retirement and education savings. Sacrificing your savings goals today will not pay dividends in the long run.

Updating your estate planning documents should also be a top priority. Essential documents include a last will and testament (that includes guardian instructions for children), healthcare and financial power of attorney documents, and a living will.

An attorney that specializes in estate planning will be needed to evaluate your needs and create the proper documentation. Once in place, keep these documents secure and let your family know how to access them if needed. Insurance coverage is another area that usually needs some attention. You should have a basic idea of your current coverage amounts and an estimate of funds you might need to accomplish goals or to provide for your family. Lastly, stay focused on your financial goals and objectives. A virtual meeting with your adviser is a safe and effective way to get the conversation started.

William B. Howard, Jr., ChFC, CFP International Place II 6410 Poplar Ave., Suite 330 Memphis, TN 38119 Telephone: (901) 761-5068 Fax: (901) 761-2217 whoward@whcfa.com 17

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Legislative

TOGETHER WE GIVE HOPE

RESEARCH

EDUCATION

PATIENT SUPPORT

COMMUNITY OUTREACH

For more than 40 years, the West name has been synonymous with compassionate cancer care and innovative research. West Cancer Foundation is taking the next step in fighting cancer by investing in research and education, patient support, and promoting the overall health of our community.

West Cancer Foundation is committed to keeping cancer patients at the center of everything that we do. We are investing in the most promising research to find the treatments of tomorrow and educating the best and brightest students to ensure the future of oncology. We are providing comprehensive patient support by offering transportation, lymphedema and form-fitting assistance to cancer patients free of charge. We are committed to addressing the health inequities in our community by providing free cancer screenings to those who cannot afford them.

Together we give hope in the face of cancer.

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westcancerfoundation.org

Facts Over Fear QI

Legislative

Preparing for the COVID-19 Vaccines Across Tennessee

TMA invites you to our newest CME class covering the technology and science of the COVID-19 vaccines. This curriculum puts healthcare professionals in a confident position to administer and address the vaccines with patients.

• Know the science behind the vaccines, including safety and risks • Learn best practices for dealing with those who are vaccine hesitant • Address misinformation, misconceptions and patient questions Featuring public health experts Dr. Buddy Creech and Dr. Michelle Fiscus.

Free of charge thanks to an unrestricted educational grant from BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee Foundation.

TNmed.org/vaccine

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HOW ARE YOU MAKING A MARK ON OUR COMMUNITY? Church Health needs people like you. Health care volunteers are needed in all of our clinical areas–medical, dental, eye care, behavioral health and physical rehabilitation. And you can serve from your practice or see patients at our Crosstown Concourse facility.

Please call us at 901-701-2338 or visit ChurchHealth.Org/Volunteer 20

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Crises don’t last.

Commitment does.

It’s not about challenging times. It’s not about “new normals”. It’s about staying true to what matters most. At Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare, your safety remains our top priority.

And we’re more committed than ever to your health. We will continue to do all we can to support our community and improve every life we touch. We’re here for you. Every single day.

To learn more about our services, visit methodisthealth.org.

Whitney Slade, MD

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10/19/20 3:43 PM