Hospital leaders hope improving access to telemedicine will be one of the results of a recently announced merger. MPB's Alexis Ware reports.
Mississippi Baptist Health System and Tennessee-based Baptist Memorial Health Care are merging. Baptist Memphis President and CEO Jason Little says the merger is part of a regional strategy for the organization.
"It made sense for a lot of different reasons to come together and have a shared mission and merge our two organizations, so we could take an opportunity to benefit from a scale across not only the state of Mississippi but also Tennessee and Arkansas."
Mississippi Baptist is the parent company of four hospitals while the Memphis organization has 17 hospitals across three states. Together the hospitals will become the largest healthcare provider in the state and will reach half the population. Little says the merger will give Mississippians in rural areas better healthcare access through telemedicine.
"We can deliver best in class infectious disease care to you or psychiatry care whatever the case may be via telemedicine, so if that hospital doesn't have a physician in the community we can still deliver that kind of improvement enhancement and care for them."
The merger went into effect on Monday.