As Regional One Health plans to build a new hospital to meet our community’s medical needs, the Women’s Services team is excited to expand access alongside the health care system as a whole.
Under the leadership of Dr. John Schorge, the Women’s Services department has built a robust selection of services to meet patients’ needs throughout their life.
They look forward to continuing to add care options and expand research and education programs to ensure a bright future for patients in the Mid-South and beyond.
Improving access to advanced care in our community is at the heart of Regional One Health’s vision for a new hospital.
The Women’s Services team shares that vision and is playing a crucial role in turning it into reality. Since joining Regional One Health as chief of OB/GYN in 2021, John Schorge, MD, FACS, has put Women’s Services program on a parallel trajectory to that of the hospital.
“We’re looking to rebrand community perceptions and become a destination of choice by raising the level of care in our community and beyond,” Dr. Schorge said. “OB/GYN and Women’s Services will be a key pillar for the future growth of Regional One Health.”
Dr. Schorge and his team have plans to grow in several key areas: patient care and services, research, and teaching.
Dr. Schorge said expanding the services available at Regional One Health helps address health care disparities by allowing more patients to find the care they need close to home.
For years, Regional One Health has been well-known for its flagship high-risk obstetrics service, which is one of the hospital’s Centers of Excellence and a regional resource. The health care system has also built a well-established OB/GYN service and the only hospital-based midwifery program in Memphis, giving patients options in the type of care model they prefer for women’s wellness, prenatal, and childbirth care.
However, when Dr. Schorge arrived five years ago, the only specialized services were the Center for HPV and Dysplasia, which helps prevent cancers related to the human papillomavirus; the region’s only Pediatric & Adolescent Gynecology practice led by a fellowship-trained provider; and a Menopause Care Clinic to help patients stay healthy as they age.
“We’re looking to become a destination of choice by raising the level of care in our community and beyond,” Dr. John Schorge, Chief of OB/GYN, said. “OB/GYN and Women’s Services will be a key pillar for the growth of Regional One Health.”
Along with continuing those essential services, Dr. Schorge worked to expand the options.
His area of expertise is complex gynecologic surgery and gynecologic oncology programs, two specialties that had been difficult for Memphis women to access.
He has built a thriving gynecologic oncology practice that allows women to receive surgery and chemotherapy and participate in clinical trials right at Regional One Health.
“I was outraged when I learned patients would be diagnosed with cancer and then be sent out for care and hope their insurance was good enough. Sometimes they would get lost in the system,” he said. “We’re no longer having to refer patients out.”
For complex gynecologic surgery, the hospital recently added three new Da Vinci 5 robotic surgery platforms, making it home to the community’s most advanced technology.
Dr. Schorge said the Da Vinci 5 allows more patients to have same-day minimally invasive procedures, which allow for less pain, fewer complications, and a faster recovery. Regional One Health now performs 90 percent of its hysterectomies as minimally invasive surgeries, well above national averages, even while treating the community’s most complex cases.
Women’s Services has also added family planning services.
Bill Kutteh, MD, PhD, is providing reproductive endocrinology services, which has expanded access for fertility care in the Memphis area. Molly Houser, MD, FACOG, CDE, recently started a Complex Contraception Clinic for patients who need advanced family planning counseling and treatment options due to a variety of medical and social factors.
Next, Dr. Schorge hopes to add urogynecology services that will help women with issues like incontinence and prolapse.
The Women’s Services team is also active in outreach to introduce more patients to its services. OB/GYNs and nurse midwives are seeing patients at East Arkansas Family Health Center, Medicos Medical Center, and Memphis Health Center and giving them the option to deliver their babies at Regional One Health.
Regional One Health offers a wide variety of care options for women. Our Women’s Services team take care of patients at all stages of life, from puberty through pregnancy and into menopause; and we offer advanced care for a variety of diagnoses.
Along with expanding care options, research is a focus for the Women’s Services team.
Owen Phillips, MD, MPH and Norman Meyer, MD, PhD, FACOG started a philanthropic fund to support research. The OB/GYN department debuted a research newsletter and established an annual research summit, which is now being rolled out at the other University of Tennessee campuses statewide.
There are also four randomized controlled clinical trials available at Regional One Health, giving patients access to groundbreaking treatment options.
“We picked up our research game,” Dr. Schorge said. “There’s a whole lot of energy directed toward the future.”
The team is also dedicated to training future providers.
“We have about 15 third-year students rotating on OB/GYN every 6 weeks. UT students get the majority of their clinical experience right here in Memphis,” Dr. Schorge said.
Regional One Health and University of Tennessee Health Science Center offer the largest residency program in the Mid-South. “OB/GYN is one of the few departments where the residents spend almost all of their time at Regional One Health.”
Those residents are thriving, he added: Exam scores have jumped significantly, and graduating residents are being accepted to prestigious fellowships across the country – such as Yale and Stanford. “We’re blessed to have a very diverse residency program, and there is a lot of camaraderie and teamwork,” Dr. Schorge said.
They also offer fellowships in maternal fetal medicine and gynecologic oncology, and they just started a reproductive endocrinology and infertility fellowship as well.
Dr. Schorge said the programs not only improve patient care, they ensure providers will be trained and ready to take care of patients for years to come.