We recently connected with Scott Morris, MD, MDiv and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Scott, thanks for joining us today. If you had a defining moment that you feel really changed the trajectory of your career, we’d love to hear the story and details.

When I moved to Memphis, Tennessee was the defining moment.

I first came to Memphis in 1986. Having completed my theological and medical education, I was determined to begin a health-care ministry for the working uninsured in low-wage jobs. I had dreamed of this for years as I slogged my way through the training that would make it possible.

When the time came, I chose Memphis because historically it is one of the poorest major cities in the U.S. In 1987, as it remains today, the overwhelming majority of people without health insurance in America are working—conservatively about 26 million. They wash our dishes, clean our houses, cook our food, care for our children, and will one day dig our graves. When they get sick, they don’t qualify for anything. Their options are very few.

The first clinic tended to 12 people. Over 35 years, more than 80,000 different individuals have come through Church Health’s doors.

Today we see patients in clinics for primary care, urgent care, dental work, and optometry services. Behavioral health, life coaching, and physical rehabilitation are integrated into our clinics, and we have a teaching kitchen offering classes on culinary medicine for patients and the community. The Church Health model is used in more than 90 clinics around the country.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Here is my standard bio: Dr. Morris is founder and Chief Executive Officer of Church Health in Memphis, which opened in 1987 to provide quality, affordable health care for working, uninsured or underserved people and their families.

Thanks to a broad base of financial support from the faith community, and the volunteered help of doctors, nurses, dentists and others, Church Health has grown to become the largest faith-based clinic of its type in the nation.

Last year, Church Health had over 61,000 patient encounters with over 17,500 unique individuals.

Dr. Morris has an undergraduate degree from the University of Virginia, a Master of Divinity degree from Yale University, and M.D. from Emory University. He is a board-certified family practice physician and an ordained United Methodist minister.

Here is my story:
My path began in Atlanta, where I grew up. I attended the University of Virginia and completed a bachelor’s degree in history. Subsequently I received my Master of Divinity from Yale Divinity School and my medical degree from Emory Medical School. I completed his residency in family medicine at the Medical College of Virginia.

Coming to Memphis was a bit of serendipity. After becoming a family medicine physician, I knew I wanted to create a healthcare ministry for the working poor. I read somewhere that Memphis was one of the poorest cities in the country, and left for Memphis to hang a shingle in 1986. We opened Church Health in 1987 after meeting and garnering support from all faiths and business partnerships. When the doors opened, Church Health saw 12 people. Church Health now has over 60,000 patient visits per year.

When we began in 1987 there were 26 million uninsured Americans. Almost all of them were working in low wage jobs. I believe that if you are going to use the resources of the Faith Community, you should go where the need is greatest. In 1987 as it remains today, the overwhelming majority of people who were and are without health insurance in America are working. They do the jobs that make our lives comfortable. They wash our dishes, clean our houses, cook our food, care for our children and will one day dig our graves. When they get sick, they don’t qualify for anything. They don’t complain. There options are very few. We aren’t able to care for everyone, so we focus on this group of people. These days more than half of our patients don’t speak English and are undocumented immigrants.

I bristle at suggesting we focus on the “deserving poor”. We focus on where the need is greatest. In the end we are a great exercise in the allocation of scarce resources. We have to make difficult decisions every day in terms of how we use the resources we have at our disposal. We have a thousand sub-specialist physicians who are willing to volunteer to see our patients. They will do surgery and care for complicated medical problems that I, as a family physician, along with my partners , need help with in providing appropriate care. Our goal is to provide the same care I would want my mother to receive. This means that sometimes we have to tell patients,” we can’t help you with that problem. ” In rare situations, the physician may not be willing to donate care for an undocumented patient.

We must respect that decision, in order to have that physician be willing to care for someone born in Memphis who has the same problem. In a perfect world we wouldn’t have to make decisions like that. But while we work every day to develop Martin Luther King Jr’s Beloved Community, we aren’t there yet.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

The Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) passed in 2010. Most of the key components went into place in 2014. In the wisdom of the supreme court, expansion of Medicaid was left to every state to enact on its own. In Tennessee, along with most states in the South, our legislature has chosen not to expand the Medicaid roles to include many of the working uninsured. Without Medicaid expansion, no one will qualify unless you meet a critical criteria are blind, disabled, over 65, or a child or pregnant mother. Someone under 65 might never earn another cent and will not qualify for Medicaid because they don’t meet a categorical criteria. This leaves ” the Exchange” which allows people to purchase health insurance on the open market with government funding subsidies.

The Exchange was predicated on all 50 states expanding Medicaid, so if a person’s income is BELOW, not above – BELOW 138% of the poverty level. This is roughly $12 an hour for a family of 4. Currently, about 80,000 people depend on Church Health for their health care. 90% of them fall below 138% of the poverty level. None of them qualify to receive the subsidy because they make too little. I know you must think I got that wrong, because what I just told you is that the poorest people get nothing.

In states like Tennessee for most working uninsured patients, the impact of the Affordable Care Act has been very, very little. Jesus said “The poor will always be with you.” So far, he has been right. I just don’t think he thought there would be so many poor people.

Most of the legislation that can impact large groups of people are at the state level. In Tennessee that would be accepting the funding to expand Medicaid, but with the Republican Super Majority, that is sadly, unlikely to happen. Which means much of our effort needs to be with smaller endeavors working at a bureaucratic level. For example, finding ways for physician loan repayment programs to apply for free and charitable clinics like Church Health, which exist all over the country, to have young doctors be able to participate in medical school debt forgiveness programs run by the Federal Government. Right now, unless it is a Federally funded clinic, these young doctors, in most situations, have to pay the entirety of the loan. The same is true for having to pay for malpractice insurance. I realize these issues aren’t earth shaking matters, but are the type of changes that can actually impact the care of tens of thousands of poor people in America.

Training and knowledge matter of course, but beyond that what do you think matters most in terms of succeeding in your field?

Someone a lot smarter than me once told me that “You should always over invest in the young”. We have a deep desire to raise up young health care professionals who care about the work we do. We do that in several ways. I will point out three. One is that we have a gap year program for recent college graduates who want to go to medical, dental, optometry or other health professional schools. It is a yearlong program starting each June. We pay $15 /hr. and the students work full time getting enormous clinical experience with direct hands on exposure to the type of physician they hope to become. We have deep commitment to recruit students of color into our program. Memphis is a black city and are working to make Memphis the city that trains black doctors. The second way we are doing this is through a family medicine residency program where we are the clinic placement site for 18 resident physicians. This is three-year opportunity where these young physicians help care for our patients and where we are able to teach them through all the ways we care for our patients.

And lastly, there are 168 allopathic medical schools in America, but only 4 HBCU medical schools, one of which is Meharry Medical school based in Nashville, but only one medical school in America that is affiliated with the Church. Meharry is a United Methodist Church institution. We are now working extremely closely with Meharry to create a Memphis Campus affiliated with Church Health and other key Memphis institutions. Our hope is that the broader church will embrace this work for the purpose of increasing the number of physicians of color across the United States.

Contact Info:

• Website: churchhealth.org
• Instagram: @churchhealthmemphis
• Facebook: @churchhealthmemphis
• Linkedin: company/churchhealth
• Twitter: @ChurchHealth901
• Youtube: @chcmemphis
• Other: TikTok: @churchhealth

Image Credits
Courtesy of Church Health