After years of operating at odds, Nashville General Hospital and Meharry Medical College have signed a professional services agreement to last through 2027.
The agreement formalizes a partnership in which Meharry residents complete their education and training at Nashville General. In addition, the two organizations will participate in joint hiring, ensuring physicians understand the obligation to help students. Meharry Medical College will now have a seat on the Hospital Authority Board, which governs Nashville General Hospital, the city’s safety net hospital.
President and CEO of Meharry Medical College James Hildreth told reporters Wednesday morning that the hospital’s new administration allowed the partnership to happen. Chief nursing officer Veronica Elders was named to the role of interim executive director following the departure of Dr. Joseph Webb in February. Webb had served in the role for 10 years and resigned after the Hospital Authority Board chose not to renew his contract during a negative audit.
Hildreth twice said that “transparency” was missing from the partnership before.
“That makes all the difference,” he said. “If the leadership is not buying into this, it’s just not going to happen. So the change in leadership of the hospital made a huge difference.
“It’s the way it should have been from the beginning, because we are joined in this,” he continued. “We cannot do what we do without them, and to some extent, they need our physicians to do what they do.”
“We need each other,” Elders added.
The city’s safety-net hospital’s lease on the Meharry Medical College campus is set to expire in 2027
The agreement is also a step toward a new hospital building for Nashville General, which has circled the idea for years. Mayor Freddie O’Connell had previously told both organizations that they had to complete the professional services agreement before his office would participate. Webb sought to secure a new location for the hospital, including land donated from Metro and a private investor. Those efforts never materialized.
“This now lets us take that important next step,” O’Connell said Wednesday, adding that Metro will start a working group on the matter. “I've already talked to both leaders, Dr. Hildreth, Dr. Elders. I think there is a lot of alignment, and now we actually get to look toward that brighter future. Now that we have this restored partnership, we can start defining what that hospital looks like, where it might be.”
When asked if the city would consider donating land for the new site, O’Connell pointed out that, conveniently, the city recently completed a land survey. O’Connell told reporters that Nashville General will always maintain a presence in North Nashville, but that Metro and the hospital would consider outposts in other parts of town. Nashville General in 2024 opened an outpost in the Bordeaux neighborhood and also has a presence on Charlotte Avenue.
The relationship between Nashville General Hospital and Meharry Medical college began in 1998, when Nashville General moved to the Meharry campus. Over the years, the two entities have been at odds, with Meharry leaders expressing that they felt out of the loop of plans for the proposed new building in 2022; later that year they reached a lease agreement that ends in 2027.
Hildreth pointed out that federal Medicaid cuts will leave more Nashvillians potentially in need of care from Nashville General Hospital. O’Connell said he knows Metro cannot absorb all of the shortfalls, and when asked if the next governor of Tennessee should step up to help fill in Medicaid gaps, he said he believes the issue should come up in the campaign.
This article was first published by our sister publication, the Nashville Post.
