Baptist Memorial Health Care System
Memphis, Tennessee
Jason Little, President and CEO
Baptist Memorial Health Care began as a 150-bed hospital in downtown Memphis in 1912. It was
formed by the Southern Baptist Conventions of Tennessee, Mississippi and Arkansas because they
recognized a tremendous need for a health care facility in this part of the country. The hospital’s
early days were rough – at one point, it almost closed – but eventually it grew to become the largest
private hospital in the world. The hospital played a very important role in the history of health care in
the 20 th century, celebrating many firsts along the way.
The Baptist Memorial Health Care system was created in 1981 to provide an integrated health care
delivery system offering a full continuum of care to communities throughout the Mid-South. Today,
a total of 21 hospitals in Arkansas, Tennessee and Mississippi; an 800-member physician group; and
dozens of other entities are affiliated with Baptist.
Baptist Memorial Health Care’s staff chaplains are a part of the health care team. Patients, family
members or employees can ask that a chaplain be involved in spiritual or emotional care. In our
hospitals, our chaplains represent their own faith but deal with spiritual issues that transcend
denominational lines.
In August 2017, Baptist’s Pastoral Care Department introduced the Rev. Jimmy Terry Preaching
Series: It’s All About Jesus, and it has been a tremendous success. Through the series, Gospel
messages have reached more than 100,000 people in person or through social media.
The series is named in memory of a beloved member of Baptist’s Board of Trustees and the founder
and former pastor of Tabernacle Baptist Church in Clarksville, Tennessee. Each month, a speaker ‒
usually an ordained Baptist minister ‒ delivers an evangelical message to employees, physicians,
patients and visitors at Baptist’s flagship hospital. The message is also broadcast to all 21 of Baptist’s
hospitals in Tennessee, Mississippi and Arkansas, and it is promoted on Baptist’s Facebook page.
The pastoral care team has placed “prayer crosses” in 13 Baptist Memorial Hospital lobbies,
including in several of its Tennessee hospitals. Patients, visitors, employees and physicians can write
prayer requests on colored strips of paper and submit them through slits in the cross. A chaplain then
takes the prayer requests and prays over them.
Baptist Carroll County (formerly known as Baptist Huntingdon) and Baptist Tipton won QUEST
2020™ performance awards from Premier, a health care improvement company that unites 3,900
U.S. hospitals to improve the health of communities. Baptist Tipton won the Top Performance
Threshold award for performing better than any other hospital in its peer group in four key areas, and
Baptist Carroll County and was named a Top Performance Threshold Award finalist for having the
second highest performance scores in its peer groups.
We expanded our Acute TeleNeurology program to four Tennessee hospitals – Baptist Union City,
Baptist Tipton, Baptist Collierville and Baptist Women’s Hospital ‒ giving these facilities the power
to save even more lives. Through Acute TeleNeurology, an out-of-town neurologist can evaluate
patients who may have suffered a stroke, seizure, severe headache, aneurysm or other neurological
condition and help the onsite physician deliver treatment.