Rex Healthcare is stronger as a part of the UNC Health Care System

A post from Dr. Keith Nance, chair of Rex's Medical Executive Committee... 

I recently signed a letter to UNC’s special committee reviewing WakeMed’s offer to purchase Rex Healthcare and urged them to decline the offer. I was compelled to sign that letter and speak up here, on Dr. Patel’s blog, for a number of reasons, all of which center around my belief that Rex Healthcare is stronger as a part of the UNC Health Care System.

I should note that I am a physician and the current Chairman of Rex Hospital’s Medical Executive Committee, so I have a unique understanding of the benefits of the UNC / Rex partnership.

Over the past decade the teamwork and collaboration between UNC, one of the nation’s leading academic medical centers in tertiary and quaternary care, and Rex has elevated healthcare quality and access in our region by:
• Providing Wake County residents with access to the type of advanced care provided only at academic medical centers.
• Enabling Rex’s patients to participate in life-saving clinical trials, or have access to other specialty services such as:
o The specialty children’s clinics located on the Rex campus;
o UNC’s gynecologic oncology clinic at Rex; and High-risk pregnancy care.
• Giving Rex physicians access to UNC specialists to consult on difficult cases to ensure the best minds are collaborating on patient treatment plans. This benefit is particularly important in our oncology service.
• Opening three additional healthcare sites in Wake County for residents to easily access care.

Unlike many of my colleagues who signed the recent letter and who are community physicians, I practice exclusively within the walls of Rex Hospital. I have the privilege of working with many Rex co-workers daily. I am continually impressed by the organizational culture of Rex Healthcare and doubt that it can be matched by most institutions. That culture and atmosphere of family translates into excellent patient care. Excellent co-worker satisfaction leads to excellent patient and physician satisfaction. If the partnership between UNC Health Care and Rex were to be dissolved, I can assure you that the quality of care delivered would diminish and that patient, physician and co-worker satisfaction would decline.

As a pathologist, I see the benefit of research between Rex and UNC. Rex, as the leading cancer facility in Wake County, is able to provide important tissue samples from a number of cancers to researchers at UNC. These samples are crucial to UNC researchers who are looking for new cancer treatments and cures.

I reaffirm my call for the UNC special committee to respectfully decline WakeMed’s offer to purchase Rex Healthcare. UNC Health Care and Rex Healthcare are stronger together, for our patients, our employees, our physicians and the people of North Carolina and we need to keep them this way.

Please join me in supporting a continued UNC / Rex partnership by sharing your feelings with the special committee reviewing WakeMed’s offer at unchealthcare.org/specialcommittee or posting a comment on www.uncrexpartnership.com. 

- Keith V. Nance, MD

A Successful Healthcare Partnership

I have created this blog as I and many of my colleagues are very concerned about the future of healthcare in Wake County. This area has enjoyed an incredible growth of quality healthcare provision. Part of this successful growth is attributed to a very productive relationship between Rex Hospital and UNC. The teamwork and collaboration between one of the nation's leaders in tertiary healthcare (UNC) and Rex has effected an elevation of healthcare quality and access to tertiary level care in our region. This has led to Rex being recognized as a top 50 hospital in the nation in 2011, and with excellence in nursing care (top 6% in the nation). The proposal by Wake Med to purchase Rex is not in the best interests of healthcare provision in Wake County. I do not know WakeMed’s motivations, but I am concerned that it is trying to sever the Rex/UNC relationship to strengthen its position in the Triangle – i.e. so it does not have to compete against an organization that has outperformed them in quality measures, financial measures, physician relations, employee satisfaction and most importantly, patient satisfaction.

This offer by Wake Med is likely not viable on many levels, however appears to have raised discussion regarding selling Rex to raise funds for the state. Selling Rex to ANYONE is going to be very detrimental to healthcare provision in Wake County. If the partnership between UNC and Rex is dissolved, the overall quality of care available to the community would diminish. Selling Rex is not a long-term solution for the state’s budget challenges. As a physician, any proposal that would break a healthcare partnership that has proven success, is committed to the health of our community and has an exciting vision for the future of our healthcare, simply makes no sense. As a healthcare provider who is directly involved in healthcare in this area, time has come to speak up and stand up for our patients and our community's health. The UNC Rex partnership is successful and one that many regions in the country can only dream to have for their patients and in their community.