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