$21 million granted for patients

Duke Endowment is giving S.C. health alliance funds to enhance safety, care

By JAMES T. HAMMOND

jhammond@thestate.com

The Duke Endowment aims to dramatically improve patient safety and care with its $21 million grant to Health Sciences South Carolina, the director of the health care division of the $2.7 billion philanthropy said Tuesday.

“We want to ensure that our dollars go as directly as possible to patient care,” said Mary Piepenbring, following the Duke Endowment’s announcement Tuesday at the State House.

She cited initiatives such as fostering the use of electronic medical records to store and dispense information and developing patient simulators upon which medical staff can practice as examples of the improvements she hopes to see grown in South Carolina’s hospitals.

Medical University of South Carolina President Ray Greenberg cited estimates that as many as 100,000 people die each year nationwide because of medical errors.

Greenberg said the Duke Endowment grant is “a tribute to the vision of the General Assembly” for funding the incentives that led to the creation of the health care alliance. Health Sciences South Carolina, the consortium of hospitals and universities that secured the Duke grant, will be able to increase the award’s reach by using it to tap millions of dollars in state money.

The Duke Endowment’s track record in forming long-term alliances to fund health care needs in the Carolinas suggests that the $21 million, three-year grant announced Tuesday could mark a long-term expansion of Duke grants in the state.

Last year, the endowment’s health care grants in South Carolina totaled $18.1 million. The endowment has given $1 million since June 2005 to patient simulator labs that are being developed under Dr. John Schaefer, the Endowed Chair holder in Patient Simulation Education and Research at the Medical University of South Carolina.

Schaefer’s labs in Greenville, Columbia and Charleston will feature mannequins and other patient simulators that allow medical staff in training to learn procedures before they conduct them on living patients.

The six institutions of the Health Sciences South Carolina collaboration “have long-standing, very productive relationships” with the Duke Endowment, Piepenbring said. “We are sure those relationships will grow.”

The alliance comprises the University of South Carolina, the Medical University of South Carolina, Clemson University, Palmetto Health System, Greenville Hospital System and Spartanburg Regional Health System. The alliance has created an entity with the financial and clinical muscle to rival major health care institutions in the nation’s large urban areas.

“We face complex problems that can’t be addressed by a single institution,” Piepenbring said.

Reach Hammond at (803) 771-8474.