Methodist Hospitals Draw National Praise

MEMPHIS, Tenn. - It's a healthcare system with a long list of accolades. Just this year alone, Methodist University Hospital received the gold seal of approval for excellence in its stroke and heart attack programs.

It's the first Mid-South hospital to broadcast a craniotomy, which is a procedure that involves removing a bone flap from the skull, while the patient was awake.

This year Methodist Le Bonheur was named in the top 100 best places to work in healthcare. But for the leader of Methodist University, the flagship hospital of the Methodist Le Bonheur healthcare system, its best is not good enough.

Methodist CEO Kevin Spiegel has been at the hospital's helm for about two years. Spiegel says, "We're on the quest to be one of the top 100 programs and that is a goal that we have set and we're going to achieve that."

Spiegel says he wanted to expand on the hospital's rich history of expertise, so he made the decision to team up with New York's Columbia University Medical Center.

"Columbia can offer us expertise in the research and education and join us with our quest for excellence," says Spiegel.

That's not where this partnership ends. The University of Tennessee Health Science Center is also getting in on the act.

For the past three months, doctors in this partnership have been trading information, and learning new treatments. Doctors just like Glenn Schoettle, chief of the division of thoracic surgery at University of Tennessee Health Sciences.

"We felt like and the hospital felt like that being able to partner and collaborate with a proven commodity in those two entities in cardiac surgery, it's best for all of us," says Dr. Schoettle.

Doctors from Memphis have traveled to New York, and Columbia University Doctors have spent time here in the Bluff City.

Schoettle says, "I think we had a long standing history of a large volume cardiac program, but there's nothing that says we can't go to the next level."

That drive to go above and beyond "good enough" to excellent, is what put this hospital in the national spotlight.

Spiegel says, "We do have wonderful centers of excellence, both in liver transplants and our solid organ transplant program and our cardiac program."

In April of this year, Apple CEO Steve Jobs experienced the Methodist brand of care and treatment first hand. Jobs chose Methodist University to perform a life saving liver transplant.

Spiegel says when patients like Jobs are searching for top tier care, they look at the data, and the data from Methodist equaled a longer life.

While it seems it's difficult to improve on what many consider greatness, Methodist says they push themselves harder everyday because of the people in the Memphis community.

Spiegel says, "When we talk about care for ourselves, our neighbors and this entire community, the Methodist system is committed to working together to enhance our level of care."

That world class care reaches further than the communities surrounding the Mid-South. In August, visiting Californian Jim Munn suffered a heart attack. For a short while, he was dead. Paramedics, performing CPR, rushed Munn to Methodist University where doctors brought him back to life using a hypothermia procedure.

It's this type of patient care that made Columbia University eager to partner with Methodist.

Spiegel says, "An Ivy League, one of the best programs in the world, came here and was absolutely impressed by the level of care we provide everyday."

Doctors, who can be stoic about things other than the science of data, get animated when they talk about the Methodist model.

Schoettle says "As we go forward I think the possibilities are endless, including residency and even physicians that may come back and forth from one hospital to the next."

Spiegel says, "We want to be an academic resource for the entire Mid-South, a destination point for the highest level of care."