Ascension Saint Thomas and Nashville-based Contessa are joining together to offer Home Recovery Care, an emerging health care option that brings inpatient care to patients’ homes.

Home Recovery Care will be available for patients at Saint Thomas Midtown and West hospitals this fall, followed by Saint Thomas Rutherford and surrounding communities.

Contessa operates Home Recovery Care, facilitating hospital-level care for patients in the home by providing three key elements: the clinical model that enables safe delivery of hospital-level care in the home; the administrative capabilities to be reimbursed by health plans; and Care Convergence, a proprietary technology platform that supports the clinical and administrative functions.

“As a Nashville-based company, we are especially thrilled to bring Home Recovery Care to Ascension Saint Thomas with a strong reputation across Tennessee and beyond,” says Travis Messina, chief executive officer, Contessa. “Home-based hospital care, such as Home Recovery Care, is gaining national momentum and we are excited for Ascension Saint Thomas to be the first provider to offer this differentiated service in Tennessee. We look forward to working with Ascension Saint Thomas clinicians and leadership to expand the options for high-quality care available to our family, friends and neighbors.”

Patients using Contessa’s Home Recovery Care model at health systems across the country have embraced this care option with over a 90% acceptance rate, resulting in a significant patient satisfaction increase.

IGA expands with Memphis location

Insurance Group of America, a Franklin-based boutique insurance agency, has announced a series of new additions to its team, as well as expansion to Memphis.

IGA has opened an office in Memphis that will be led by new partner, Bo Midgett, a West Tennessee-based insurance executive with nearly two decades of experience. IGA opened a Chattanooga office earlier this year.

Before joining IGA, Midgett served as senior vice president at Memphis-based insurance agency, Lipscomb & Pitts, where he spent 15 years. Before that, he worked at First Tennessee Bank in the financial planning industry.

Along with its expansion to Memphis and Chattanooga, IGA bolstered its risk management services with the addition of Kelsey Unland. As director of risk management at IGA, Unland leads a team who work with construction, retail, manufacturing, wood product and nonprofit organizations to help implement and monitor programs that ensure safe workplaces.

Before IGA, Unland held several positions, including director of client relations, at Fortier Loss Control Consultants. A Nashville-native, Unland earned her bachelor’s degree from Middle Tennessee State University and her MBA from Tennessee Technological University.

Additionally, IGA further strengthened its roster by adding Amy Cain and Azia Hurley as account executives.

Hurley most recently served as an account manager at the Crichton Group for four years where she led the agency’s small business unit. She also worked as a generalist and brings a strong background in working with real estate, large commercial accounts and social services. She began her insurance career at State Farm, where her specialty was in personal lines, life and health. Hurley earned her bachelor’s degree from Middle Tennessee State University.

HCA has record number for incoming residents

HCA Healthcare has announced that 1,453 new medical residents and fellows are joining its growing graduate medical education programs, a record incoming class both for HCA Healthcare and among U.S. programs.

HCA Healthcare, a leading health care provider based in Nashville, has 38,000 employed and affiliated physicians at its 185 hospitals and approximately 2,000 sites of care in 21 states and the United Kingdom.

It now has more than 3,900 residents and fellows. It is the largest sponsor of graduate medical education programs in the U.S.

The company maintains 56 teaching hospitals in 14 states, primarily in regions with a deficit of physician training programs. Plans call to continue to grow existing programs and add new programs to accommodate as many as 7,000 residents by 2025.

The U.S. could experience a shortage of nearly 122,000 physicians by 2032, an Association of American Medical Colleges study reports.

While medical school enrollment is increasing, residency slots are not keeping pace, which experts fear could create a potential chokepoint in the supply of new physicians.

By adding more than 2,500 new positions since 2014, including 700 this year alone, HCA Healthcare is addressing a significant physician workforce issue because its residency programs largely are located in regions – the Southeast, across the Sunbelt and in the Inner Mountain West – where there are more medical school graduates than residency positions.

Community Health to sell West Virginia hospital

Franklin-based Community Health Systems, Inc. has announced that subsidiaries of the company will sell 92-bed Bluefield Regional Medical Center in Bluefield, West Virginia, and its associated ancillary health care operations.

Subsidiaries of Princeton Community Hospital will acquire the facility. The transaction is expected to close in the third quarter of 2019, subject to customary regulatory approvals and closing conditions.

Community Health Systems is one of the largest publicly traded hospital companies in the United States and a leading operator of general acute care hospitals in communities across the country.

Change Healthcare offers pricing of IPO

Nashville-based Change Healthcare Inc., an independent health care technology platform, has announced the pricing of its initial public offering of 42,857,142 shares of its common stock at a price to the public of $13.00 per share.

Also, the company says its concurrent offering of 5 million of its 6 percent tangible equity units with a stated amount of $50.

The completion of the units offering is conditioned upon the completion of the common stock offering, but the completion of the common stock offering is not conditioned upon the completion of the units offering.

Change has granted the underwriters in the common stock offering a 30-day option to purchase up to an additional 6,428,571 shares of common stock. Change has granted the underwriters in the units offering an option to purchase, within a 13-day period beginning on, and including, the date of the initial issuance of the Units, up to an additional 750,000 Units.

The shares and the units are expected to begin trading on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the symbols “CHNG” and “CHNGU,” respectively.

Nashville makes Beard’s Taste of America series

Nashville has been chosen as one of 20 U.S. cities to host The James Beard Foundation’s Taste America culinary pop-up series.

Beard Award winners, nominees and participants in the Foundation’s mission-forward Impact programs will be part of the program, bringing the Good Food for Good programs to Music City.

Dates will be announced later in the summer.

Andy Little of Josephine, presented by Nashville Convention & Visitors Corp., is expected to participate.

“Taste America gives food lovers across the country an opportunity to have a unique dining experience while learning more about the impact of their food choices from passionate leaders who are changing the landscape of the food industry,” says Clare Reichenbach, chief executive officer of the James Beard Foundation.

“Taste America is a celebratory manifestation of our mantra: Good Food for Good.”

Tickets for Taste America presented by Capital One events will be on sale at jamesbeard.org/tasteamerica.

Nashville’s office space construction on the rise

A new national report by Yardi Matrix says the cities of Nashville, Brooklyn and Austin have the most office property space under construction as a percentage of existing stock.

U.S. office properties, riding an ongoing strong job market, saw asking rents rise 0.4% in May 2019 over the previous three-month period, the report found.

Yardi Matrix offers the industry’s most comprehensive market intelligence tool for investment professionals, equity investors, lenders and property managers who underwrite and manage investments in commercial real estate.

State Library announces Revolutionary War plan

The Tennessee State Library and Archives has unveiled Patriot Paths, an ongoing project that uses Revolutionary War pension records to map the paths that these soldiers took before and after their service.

Thousands of veterans flooded into Tennessee at the conclusion of the war, and about 2,000 pension files exist for those who came here.

Since most of the soldiers were not eligible for a pension until they were in their 80s, the number who received a pension was relatively small compared to the number who served.

Staff and interns pored over those pension files to find the dates and places where the soldiers were born, married, enlisted and died. Soldiers who had been born throughout the colonies and even Europe ultimately made their way to Tennessee.

That information was added to a database and then coordinated with GIS mapping software. Historians and genealogists can search for veterans and study the patterns of migration.

Researchers say three pensioners who ended up in Sumner County – William Proctor, Albert Hendricks and Thomas Milbourn – all lived in Rockbridge County, Virginia, during the Revolutionary War. Moreover, all were originally from Maryland.

The public is invited to visit the site and conduct searches, but Sherrill asks that they remember it is a work in progress. Data have been entered on only 1,200 of the pensioners so far.

Patriot Paths can be accessed on the Library & Archives website at sos.tn.gov/tsla.