It was reported last Thursday that Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) will become the new medical partners for the Tennessee Titans, making VUMC an official medical sponsor, partner, or affiliate for all three of Nashville’s major sports teams.
Ascension Saint Thomas is reportedly planning to end its 25-year partnership with the Titans this year, and VUMC will instead meet the medical needs of the professional football team. It is unclear when the team plans to announce the VUMC deal, but Ascension’s partnership with the Titans is reported to expire on March 1.
Before the partnership with the Titans, VUMC most recently entered a “mutli-year partnership” with Nashville Soccer Club (SC) in 2020, when the soccer team began wearing uniforms bearing the VUMC logo, and a hospital spokesman said its employees began “working with the players on a daily basis to help ensure their safety and well-being.”
That partnership was announced more than a decade after VUMC became the official healthcare and emergency services provider for the Nashville Predators. In 2008, the professional hockey team announced in a press release that it would begin receiving support from both Vanderbilt Sports Medicine and Vanderbilt LifeFlight Event Medicine.
Reports of the new partnership with the Titans emerge after VUMC faced a number of headline-generating controversies, beginning in 2023, when the Tennessee Attorney General requested billing records to investigate reports a physician, “publicly described her manipulation of medical billing codes to evade coverage limitations on gender-related treatment.”
The attorney general’s office has also accused the hospital of “deliberately” working “to frighten its patients” with claims regarding its investigation, and some of those transgender patients have since filed a class action lawsuit against VUMC after it turned over the records, claiming it violated its internal policies and broke federal laws.
VUMC was also mentioned in the files from the Covenant School shooting investigation obtained by The Tennessee Star in 2024, which revealed the killer was a 22-year mental health patient, and was twice evaluated for commitment by VUMC staff members.
The partnership will also come less than one year after VUMC slashed over 600 jobs, “in response to budgetary actions in Washington,” possibly referencing President Donald Trump’s executive orders freezing federal grant funding for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), or changes made through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
Only weeks after the cuts were announced, the LGBTQ Caucus of the Metropolitan Council in Nashville slammed VUMC for scrapping its “trans buddy” program, which allowed patients receiving transgender care to be assigned an activist to support their gender identity during appointments.
– – –
Tom Pappert is a 2025 recipient of the Dao Prize and the lead reporter for The Tennessee Star. He also reports for the Star News Network. Follow Tom on X. Email tips to [email protected].
Vanderbilt is just living up to its liberal self. I would never let one of my children attend the university.