Charleyn Reviere Is Meeting the Legal Challenges of Expanding Care for the Community at West Tennessee Healthcare

Three small Jackson, Tennessee, hospitals combined forces in the late 1940s when they recognized the need for a modern hospital. They created a 123-bed hospital with 166 employees. That foundation has become West Tennessee Healthcare, a comprehensive healthcare system that brings care to over half a million people across nineteen counties in West Tennessee.

Vice President and Chief Legal Officer Charleyn Reviere joined the organization in 2004. As CLO and general counsel, she advises the health system’s leadership team and Board of Trustees on legal, regulatory, risk, and compliance issues, including matters related to acquisitions, joint ventures, provider contracting, employment, malpractice, insurance, litigation, and more.

Strong leadership, an unwavering commitment to high-quality care, and ongoing community efforts have helped West Tennessee Healthcare earn trust and avoid the problems and closures that some others have seen. The healthcare system now has 7,500 employees and nearly 100 locations including 7 hospitals, behavioral health centers, primary and specialty care clinics, a comprehensive cancer center, and the region’s only Joint Commission certified stroke center.

“Our health system exists to ensure that people have access to quality care in their communities,” Reviere says. “We work to deliver care in innovative ways that are convenient for our patients.”

The COVID-19 pandemic presented many challenges but spurred some positive changes as well. While West Tennessee Healthcare had already started exploring telehealth, the pandemic accelerated those efforts. “When COVID hit, we moved to advance telehealth quickly because we knew it would be an important tool to improve care and reach underserved patients in rural areas so they wouldn’t have to travel during a global pandemic,” Reviere explains. The legal team fast-tracked the contract negotiations to facilitate its implementation.

Four years later, the healthcare system is expanding the successful telehealth program and finding new ways to embrace technology. Patients can now schedule appointments online, and discharged patients can be monitored remotely. West Tennessee Healthcare is moving to Epic as its EMR provider in October and anticipates additional advances with that platform.

For Reviere, helping deliver quality care in West Tennessee is personal—she grew up just twenty miles from her office. “Virtually every member of my family has been a patient here at one time or another,” she says. Seeing the impact that quality care has on a community is what led Reviere to join the system two decades ago.

Reviere never thought she would work in healthcare. As a high school student, she participated in a local Medical Explorers Program. That’s when a gruesome field trip to an emergency room convinced her to go to law school instead.

Although she’s not at the bedside providing patient care, Reviere finds working as a healthcare lawyer rewarding. “I know that the work I do each day helps people in my community, and that is so fulfilling,” she says.

The rewarding work is also incredibly challenging. Reviere and her team must stay on top of changing state and federal healthcare laws and regulations, ensuring that their public, nonprofit health system remains in compliance while tackling difficulties related to staffing, recruiting, and reimbursement.

How do they do it? By maintaining a spirit of teamwork coupled with a dedication to continuous learning. Reviere encourages her team to take the time to meet with their stakeholders and understand the entire health system. That way, they can better forecast how pending changes may impact the organization.

When Reviere started twenty years ago, West Tennessee had just one employed physician. Now, the organization has over two hundred employed providers, and more growth is on the horizon. The system is expanding its award-winning heart and vascular service. It has collaborated with other entities to bring a long-term acute care hospital and a children’s hospital into the community through a hospital-within-a-hospital model. They’re also preparing for an influx of community growth, as Ford Motor Company is building a nearby mega facility that will create an estimated thirty thousand new local jobs.

Amidst all this growth, the West Tennessee Healthcare team remains active in their community outreach efforts. The legal team even gets in on the act, providing public education sessions on advance directives and other patient care concerns. The clinical staff regularly provides seminars like stroke education for patients and families where individuals learn to recognize signs and symptoms. After attending a session, Reviere’s teenage neighbor noticed that her father was confused and experiencing facial paralysis. She called 911, and an ambulance transported the man to the health system’s comprehensive stroke center where he received lifesaving care.

It’s just one of many amazing events Reviere has witnessed over her last twenty years at West Tennessee Healthcare. “There are countless people I know whose lives have been saved by the care we provide here,” Reviere says.

Being part of West Tennessee Healthcare and the medical community in general continues to drive Reviere, and her passion is infectious. Reviere’s youngest son is now in his third year of medical school, and she hopes to recruit him to the team soon.