- (female announcer) Production funding for Behind The Headlines is made possible in part by the WKNO Production Fund, the WKNO Endowment Fund, and by viewers like you, thank you.

- Church Health Centers', Dr. Scott Morris, tonight, on Behind the Headlines.

[intense orchestral music] I am Eric Barnes with The Daily Memphian.

Thanks for joining us.

I am joined tonight by CEO and Founder of the Church Health Center, Dr. Scott Morris, thanks for being here again.

- Glad to be here, thanks for having me.

- Along with Bill Dries, reporter with the Daily Memphian.

We'll start with the news, you made a little news lately by not retiring.

I know that I joked with you yesterday, I saw you to say you're not retiring, but you're going to a new role, Church Health Center that you founded in 1987 and current CFO, Jenny Robbins- - That's right.

- Is taking over as CEO in July.

What's your new role gonna be?

And then we'll talk about the history of Church Health and just all kinds of things.

- So my new role is really not much different than what I'm currently doing.

Jenny's been our Chief Financial Officer for the last 11 years.

You know, many of the things that a CEO would normally do, she's already been doing.

So she's now just gonna get the credit for doing it.

I'm gonna do what I spend most of my time doing, which is seeing patients, you know, I spend more than half my time just being a doctor and then helping raise money.

I mean, we have a budget of $27 million that happens every year.

So I'm gonna keep doing that.

- Well, for people, you meet somebody in elevator, you meet somebody somewhere and they've never heard of Church Health Center.

What's your quick, 30 second version of that, and then we'll talk obviously much more about it.

- So we provide healthcare for the people who work to make our lives comfortable.

They cook our food, take care of our children, wash our dishes, cut our grass.

When they dig your grave, they don't complain yet when they get sick, their options are very few.

And we do this without relying on the federal government.

We do it because these are our neighbors.

You know, we all have an obligation, I believe, to help care for the people who are our friends.

And so that's how we do this.

And the why we do it is because people of faith are committed to do this type of work.

- And you're also a Methodist minister, ordained.

And it's a faith-based organization since the founding.

How does that play out?

How does that influence what you're doing with the science of medicine and so on?

- Look, what we don't exist to impose our faith on others.

You know, if you're a Jew, our goal is to make you a better Jew.

If you're Muslim, the same thing.

And if you're Christian, the same thing.

You know, yes, I'm a Methodist minister, but God's umbrella is big and wide.

We believe that diversity in all its forms is a good thing.

But how it plays itself out, we are body and spirit.

I believe that Descartes, not to get too philosophical here, but completely messed us all up by convincing us that you can take a human being and separate us into a body and a spirit.

And we put the body on one side and say, it's the purview of science and medicine.

We put the spirit on the other, say, it's okay to mess around through your spirit, but these two things should never connect.

Well, we all know that that is intrinsically wrong.

And yet, medicine spends all of our time just focusing on the body.

And people of faith forget that we have a body.

So how we play this out is we address the spiritual dimension of life, to realize that it is a great asset for each of us to be healthy.

- Let me bring in Bill.

- Dr. Morris, what do you think the impact of Church Health has been locally in a city that has a lot of poor people and a city that has a lot of people who when they get sick, one of their first thoughts, if not their first thought is, how much is this gonna cost and how can I pay for it?

Church Health seems to have changed that landscape to a degree at least, I think.

- Look, I came to Memphis 'cause I read it was the poorest major city in America.

You know, sadly, we're still pretty high up on that list.

What I think we have done is particularly engage the medical community, to ask how do we solve this problem collectively together.

The hospitals have charity pathways that they actually didn't have before Church Health sort of said, "Hey, there has to be a better way of doing this."

We're working very hard right now to address one of the biggest issues, which is how do poor people access subspecialty care.

We have just built a brand new eye clinic, which will work in partnership with the Hamilton Eye Clinic, UT, so that poor people who are going blind will actually get access to the best care that Memphis has to offer.

That didn't exist before Church Health.

We also have built the largest freestanding dental clinic in America.

You know, dentistry is an economic issue.

You know, you can't go from a minimum wage job to a better job if your teeth are all messed up.

So we fix people's smiles every day.

And in doing that, people get a better job.

And when they get a better job, they probably have health insurance and they don't need us anymore.

- Is there a point at which, in negotiating all of these innovations here, I would imagine that there is some frustration because it's like, "Couldn't this just be simpler?"

Why work through all of these networks when the answer to this could be so much simpler?

And that is basic access to healthcare?

- Well, we just start with it, it's beyond economic understanding, why the state of Tennessee has not chosen to expand Medicaid.

We currently turn down every year, $1.5 billion of our own tax money that we give our tax money to other states because we refuse to accept it from the federal government.

You know, I don't care what your politics are, but there is no economic sense that we don't do that.

But our legislature could say, today we want the money and Washington would write us a check for $1.5 billion.

Wouldn't you take that if that was offered to you?

- Well, I think some of the last times we had you on this show, I remember was around that whole debate.

It was Obamacare, Affordable Care Act.

Well, we can do the politics or not, but Mississippi just voted to accept that money.

- Right.

- They considered it.

- They considered it, right?

It hasn't- - They haven't done it yet, but look- - They're getting closer, I should say.

And some other states have- - 39 other states have.

A lot of red states-- - Right.

- Now have the Affordable Care Act.

- Yeah.

- Because it makes economic sense.

- Would Mississippi have an impact on Church Health?

Because I mean, do some folks from Mississippi come up to Church Health and are impacted?

- They do, and same for Arkansas.

- Yeah.

- And that's one of our great challenges is that, for Regional One, that they should get more money from Arkansas and Mississippi, but it doesn't happen.

- Yeah, we talked to Reginald Coopwood, the CEO of Regional One a couple weeks ago about that and other issues.

- But look, I don't, this goes down a rabbit trap when we're only talking about the politics and this is what has driven me crazy for 37 years, set the politics aside.

You know, we live in this community, we all claim Memphis as our home.

Well, if you live in Memphis, we have some obligation to care for each other.

You know, these days, what matters the most, not the most, but it's very important for us are people who are working, who may be undocumented, but when they get sick, what are their options?

In my opinion, if you are building a house in Germantown and you fall off the roof and you break your leg, we have some obligation to take care of them.

But people don't understand that economic implication that immigrants have on our economy.

I don't know if y'all are familiar with the Individual Taxpayer Identification Number.

Ever heard of that?

What that is, is that somebody who is undocumented actually pays taxes to the federal government in the hope that one day they could actually get papers.

I mean, last year, $13 billion was paid into the Social Security system by undocumented immigrants for which they will never receive a dime of it.

And the government knows it.

I find it unconscionable.

Social Security would fall apart if undocumented people were not paying into it.

- Is 37 years, you mentioned as a doctor and as somebody looking at and writing about and thinking about firsthand the medical system such as it is in the US, have there been improvements?

- Well, we've struggled forever.

I mean, partly because, we've created an economic system that healthcare is a major part of it.

What, one-third, well, sorry, one-sixth of the American economy is directly related to healthcare.

One-third is indirectly related.

You start messing with it, there are a lot of people watching.

- Yeah.

Bill.

- Is it part of the problem that healthcare costs too much or cost more than it should?

Because that's what we hear.

Well, it costs so much for healthcare.

Should it cost that much?

Aside from the argument of who- - There are many drivers for the cost of healthcare, many, many drivers, again, what I was just referring to about a lot of people have their hand in the till over this stuff.

For me, healthcare should be a helping profession.

The same way teaching is, the same way being a clergy is, I mean, people need to make a good living.

I'm not saying they don't, but for many, many years, our healthcare system hasn't really focused on how do we care for our entire community.

And that's what Church Health's about.

You know, that I try to stay as much away from some of the politics as I can.

Obviously I care deeply about this immigrant issue, but I do believe that once people understand that your housekeeper needs healthcare.

I mean, when you turn 65, you probably think you get Medicare, right?

You only get Medicare if somebody has paid into Social Security on your behalf for 40 quarters.

So if a housekeeper has been working for all her life, getting paid in cash, when she turns 65 she doesn't get Medicare.

She becomes a patient of Church Health because she will be uninsured for the rest of her life.

Most people don't understand that.

- Let's also look at the other side of the equation, Church Health assists a lot of people who work in the food industry, work in restaurants as wait staff for that industry.

And during the pandemic, there was a whole lot of discussion, about the restaurant industry probably having to change its model for how it pays those workers in particular.

What do you think about that?

I mean, we talked about healthcare reform.

Should there be some workplace reform involved in this?

And how workplaces think about who gets coverage and who doesn't.

- Look the concept of universal healthcare, I completely support, the implementing it, that's probably above my pay grade.

I just feel like people should get paid a living wage.

And in that, you should be focused on benefits which help your workers.

It's been shown over and over again that when people have healthcare benefits, they are better employees.

And finding some way to engage those employees so that they receive quality healthcare ought to be something every employer thinks about.

Unfortunately, It doesn't always work that way.

- Right, because on the other side of that equation, these are small businesses too.

So it's a collection of small businesses and with Church Health there is this availability of that option, right?

- Yes.

We run a program called the Memphis Plan that's intentionally designed for small businesses.

Meaning you have one or two employees.

If you've got a hundred employees, you absolutely should be providing health insurance.

But many small businesses, they struggle themselves to figure out how to have health insurance for their family.

And the Church Health can be there for them.

And, many, many people sometimes think Church Health must be a scam because we don't charge very much money, but we are able to do this because we literally have a thousand physicians who volunteer with us.

I give you just one story about how Church Health works.

So what I do as a doctor is mostly see people in our walk-in clinic.

So the criteria to come to our walk-in clinic, is I'm sick today, I don't have health insurance.

The cost is $40, that's it.

So a guy has a bad knee, works in concrete, pray you never have to work in concrete.

I X-ray his knee, if I showed it to the two of y'all, y'all would both go, that ain't right.

So he needs his knee replaced.

So we have a physician willing to do that for free, not get paid a dime because of the charity pathways the hospitals have.

Same thing is gonna get done, the patient's never gonna get a bill.

I need more than that.

Anesthesia, radiology, pathology, a couple other -ologies, all willing to donate their time.

I'm still missing something.

The piece of metal we're gonna put in his knee, all that is gonna get donated.

Now he ultimately tells me, "I can't miss work.

And for now the duct tape works just fine."

Yeah, in America, you should not have to duct tape your knee to go to work.

So we work around that and we get his knee replaced and he's back doing concrete, which is how he makes his living.

- When you came up with this idea in the 1980s, did you think it would be as complex and political as it is?

Because it's a relatively simple concept as you've outlined it, but getting there has been anything but simple, right?

- I assure you it never dawned on me that creating a faith-based health center for poor people would have anything to do with politics.

I learned almost immediately that that was wrong.

Politics gets into the weeds and if you start trying to change things for the poor, then number one, not that many people care about it, unfortunately.

But when the money starts moving around the table, then people pay attention.

- About 10 minutes here in the show.

Mental health, and I was thinking about it in part when you were talking about spirit, and you may challenge me on that, but I think for some people it's analogous a bit that it's not just the physical health, the knee, the cold, the flu, which are all obviously really important, but mental health, how much do you all involve yourself with people's mental health?

And is that a kind of gateway, to both physical health for some people?

- Yeah, so 50% of people who come to primary care doctors like me, have no medical problem.

People come to the doctor for reasons they used to come to priests.

You know, it is all complicated why that happens.

But I can't fix a broken heart in a 15-minute office visit and giving people pills, for the most part, it doesn't work very well.

So we have a behavioral health center.

We actually have counselors embedded in what we do.

But it has to go beyond just counseling.

We've developed something we call the model for healthy living where we argue there are seven things in life that are equally important, that must be in balance, if you're gonna be healthy.

You know, one of them is medical care, but only one.

Nutrition, movement, emotions, family and friends, work and your faith life.

What we believe your faith life is as important as anything the doctor might do for you to be healthy.

So all seven of those things must be in balance.

And so it's not just mental health, but mental health is critical.

- I remember years ago, and I Le Bonheur, they may still be doing this.

I just don't know but it strikes me, Le Bonheur had a program for childhood asthma and they were making real headway in terms of figuring out the drugs that would work and kids coming in and in curing or mitigating their asthma.

And then those same kids would be back in X number of months.

And what they finally realized was, wait, they're going home to homes that have mold and are feeding this asthma and no amount of drugs are gonna fix that.

To what extent do you look at that?

You're dealing with the poor who maybe are probably often living in substandard housing and all kinds of environmental situations.

Is that a bridge you guys, is that a thing you try to tackle or is it just one thing too much, too many?

- Well, we have now partnered with United Way over a program called Driving the Dream.

I don't know if y'all covered that very much, but what it does is allow us to connect with United Way agencies, not Church Health, that deal with those very issues.

So that when we find a family that has the issue of mold, let's not just keep giving that kid drugs.

Let's go into the home, let's figure out how we can solve that if it's solvable.

So yes, we care deeply about that.

- Let me shift and maybe a weird shift, but I'm curious, the huge amount of attention, and the increasing use of the GLP-4 drugs, the weight loss, diabetes drugs, that whole phenomenon.

I'm curious your take on that from your perspective with doctor, person of faith, CEO, Founder of Church Health.

I mean, clearly for some people it's, and I don't mean to be flippant, but it's people who are just losing a few pounds and it's more of an aesthetic kind of life choice.

It is clearly changed the lives of people who are obese and obesity is an epidemic in this country.

And Memphis is very much part of that.

But it's a thousand dollars a month.

A lot of insurance doesn't cover it, it's limited availability.

I mean, when you look at that dynamic, what's your take on the GLP drug?

- Well, so, we start with the model for healthy living that I just described.

To begin with, all drugs are poisons.

That's how they work.

They poison your body to prevent it from doing something, it is naturally trying to do.

You gotta be pretty doggone smart to override the body the way God created it.

Now look, I'm a statin prescribing doctors, so I prescribe drugs every day.

But if you begin with a drug as a solution, you're probably on the wrong path.

Now, I mean, we prescribe those drugs for diabetes.

I'm a believer in gastric bypass surgery, - You are or not, sorry?

- I am.

I am, I was actually interviewed on Fox News about it, one of the worst experiences of my life, 'cause they were not in favor of it.

What they weren't in favor of it is for Medicaid to pay for it.

- Yeah.

- But, you know, morbid obesity, when people are more than, significantly larger than they should be, the implications on that person's life are enormous and it's true for their family.

And when people are uninsured, somebody's gonna pay for that.

You know, poor people get sick.

The reason hospitals work with us is because we do our best to keep poor people out of the hospital who are uninsured.

That's a win-win for everybody.

So your question is about the drugs, I mean- - And what they symbolize, and how they reflect on how we look at healthcare, how the medical system works, how the industry, the sixth of the economy operates.

- Yeah, again, I am endlessly preaching against the fact that I believe in this country we have developed an unholy love affair with technology, and drugs being part of that.

We've come to believe that I can live my life any way I want to.

And when I'm broken, the doctor could use that technology to fix me.

Well, I hate to tell you this, but the technology is actually not that good and the doctor's not that smart.

You know, God gave us this body for a reason.

We have an obligation to take care of it.

So there is a path for drugs like what we're talking about in our armament, but it can't begin with that.

- But before we go to Bill with a few minutes left, is part of what you're saying, you all do a lot with nutrition, you have the kitchens in Crosstown, you're talking to people about health and exercise.

The staircase is not just aesthetically appealing in Crosstown.

It's also symbolic of walk the stairs, don't take the elevator.

I think you've said that to me, is that part of what the subtext of what you're saying is for a lot of people who are maybe turning to these drugs, you would prefer to see them making different life choices.

- If you're not making the life choices, the drugs are not gonna work.

- Yeah.

- So all of the innovations we have, if I'm hearing you correctly, they're just not innovations that are gonna negate the need for preventative healthcare, right?

I mean, so is there a problem with how we view innovations or is there a problem with the reason that we pursue innovations in medical science?

- Look, unfortunately for me, many of the innovations are driven by money.

And as opposed to being driven by what is the way for people to live a happy, healthy life.

What I believe, and at Church Health, we believe, being healthy is ultimately about three things.

Having more joy in your life, having more love in your life, and being driven closer to things greater than we are.

Now we would call that God, you don't have to call that God, but that's what it takes to be healthy.

More joy, more love and being driven closer to God.

That doesn't have anything to do with the doctor.

And it doesn't have anything to do with technology.

So any of this only matters if that's what it leads you to.

You know, I tell people all the time in your work, if your work doesn't bring you more joy, more love, driving you closer to God, you should quit.

I tell my own employees that.

If you're not getting that working with us, then life is too short.

- Go ahead, Bill.

- Go ahead.

- Oh, quick question.

I've asked other people, and I don't think I've asked you, COVID obviously you guys were front and center with COVID doing testing, doing the vaccines and all kinds of things.

Now some years removed, thankfully, from the worst of COVID.

What has not changed?

What did you change at Church Health as part of COVID that you've continued?

If anything.

- We still test, COVID is still out there.

We still see people all the time with it.

Today we'll see people with COVID.

I think it's helped us work maybe in a different way as a team than we were before.

I think we've come to see, we always have believed that it was never just about Dr. God, but that you need each other.

Communication is so important.

I think we've changed some of the ways that we communicate.

One thing that actually didn't work for us was, any type of telehealth.

- Really?

- Poor people aren't interested in telehealth.

They think that means you don't want to see me as a patient.

- Yeah.

- And don't understand that that's what the president of a bank would prefer.

But yeah, so we do almost no telehealth anymore.

- And tried?

- And we tried hard.

- Which is right for a lot of people, is increasing and in some ways not, if not the only way, the quickest way, certainly, they can get general practitioner type, you know?

- Yeah.

No, I mean we do just a very, very small amount of it now.

- Again, not retiring.

- Not retiring.

- Yeah.

So I make sure I say that.

But you'll be around, you're working, you're gonna be, and, okay.

- So Jenny Robbins, she grew up in New Orleans, an incredibly wonderful, a person committed to the work at Church Health.

- Okay.

- And we're gonna continue with our mission.

- Okay, thank you for being here.

Thank you, Bill.

Thank you for joining us.

If you've missed any of the show, go to wkno.org.

Thanks very much, and we'll see you next week.

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