‘We’ve got to change the way we operate’; RMC officials discuss MUSC partnership

During a Wednesday town hall meeting, RMC President and CEO David Southerland said the finer details of the partnership are still being ironed out.

“A lot of the questions we are getting are great questions, but the questions are further ahead than we are actually prepared to answer,” Southerland said.

RMC’s town hall meeting was held at the Calhoun County Courthouse Annex. The discussion was largely focused on the ramifications of the partnership with the Charleston-based hospital system.

RMC employee Keisha Watson asked a number of questions primarily related to hiring, employee pay and benefits, and billing and rate changes.

“We have been asked to continue operations the way we are currently operating,” Southerland said. “We are going to continue to operate under fiscally sound operations. We are not going to necessarily freeze hiring but we are not going to be adding people unless we actually absolutely have to.”

A working group is tasked with helping implement the partnership. Those discussions indicate current employees will maintain their current compensation level, Southerland said.

“Benefits will be consistent until we actually make the transition to MUSC. There may be a little bit different benefits, but when you become employed by a different organization you join under their benefit structure and their benefit plan,” he said.

“I think many of the benefits we have are similar to theirs,” Southerland said. “MUSC has a statewide health plan PEBA and we also participate in PEBA. There may be a few subtle differences that I don’t know. Hopefully there will not be a lot of major changes.”

Southerland noted MUSC uses a different medical records system than RMC.

“MUSC operates on a different platform. It is called Epic. Epic is one of the most popular platforms in the country for electronic medical records for hospital systems,” he said.

Southerland said at some point the RMC would make a transition to Epic.

“We don’t know when, we don’t know how,” he said. “It is also a very expensive process to transition. It takes a lot of work. It involves, from a physician’s standpoint, rewriting a lot of orders that go in the system. It is like building a system from the ground up. It is very complicated.”

RMC Chief Financial Officer Dennis Pettigrew said, in answer to a question about hospital rate changes and insurance contract impacts, that “there is a general feel that the university has better rates than the managed care contracts.”

“We would piggyback on their rates,” he said. Pettigew noted such matters would need to be negotiated.

Other questions included how the partnership would impact the overall performance of the hospital as it relates to patient care and the impact on the community.

“Our goal is to provide the best quality of care we can,” Southerland said. “That is what we have been working towards this year. I don’t think our goals are any different than MUSC.”

“We have struggled in a lot of areas,” he said. “There are plenty of opportunities for us to improve.”

One area for improvement is in system processes, Southerland said. He stressed the importance of making smart and tough financial decisions.

“We’ve got to change the way we operate for the hospital to continue to survive,” he said.

Someone asked how the MUSC partnership would enhance the RMC residency program.

“The university is a medical school,” Pettigrew said. “They teach and train medical students, they go to residency programs and fellowships.”

“If this moves forward, we would get to be a part of that,” Pettigrew said. “That would bring more physicians in the community and it would make it easier to recruit and that would bring more specialists into the community than we have today.”

Southerland said there are hopes the hospital could have one or two residency programs in place within the next two years.

In addition to answering questions, Southerland provided highlights of what the partnership with MUSC would look like.

Those include:

• MUSC would enter into a 99-year lease with RMC.

• MUSC would commit to a multi-year investment in RMC.

• The Medical University Hospital Authority Board, the governing body of MUSC, would oversee RMC’s finances.

• RMC would be responsible for quality oversight, medical staff accreditation and community engagement.

• All employees at RMC would be retained.

• All employee physician contracts would remain the same as long as they are within fair market range.

• RMC employees would become employees of the Medical University Hospital Authority/Medical University of South Carolina.

• Contract providers that currently provide services to RMC will most likely remain the same unless their contracts expire and the hospital renews them.

• The name could change to MUSC Health Orangeburg-Calhoun.

The partnership has to be approved by Orangeburg and Calhoun counties, which own the hospital.

A working group has been tasked with drafting an ordinance to make the partnership a reality. The partnership is expected to take effect Oct. 1.

A meeting is scheduled about the proposed partnership at 6 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 8 at Roquemore Auditorium.