What, exactly, is an alliance for fair health care and why is it needed?
That is a question I have been getting asked a lot of late, and have frankly been asking myself. Somewhere along the line in the past decade, the health care industry has shifted radically from the “health” side of its mission to the “industry” side of it.
That is not anyone’s real fault, but it is a problem for everyone — the patient, community leader, business leader, medical professional and medical administrator. It is a nationwide issue. Solving these problems can’t happen overnight, but it has to start.
That is one of the overarching tenets of Physicians for Act 432, a nonprofit group aimed at making sure health care continues to not only meet but surpass the needs of our growing community. It is why, when asked if I would take a leadership role in this group, I said yes. I believe that health care cannot live in a vacuum and instead must flourish and grow.
Our group has four basic core beliefs:
- Empower: We want to give doctors and patients the ability to follow the spirit of Act 432, which essentially created the mandate for stronger health care in the greater Greenville area. The mandate supports the primacy of the patient-doctor relationship and the autonomy of a doctor’s decision-making process, seeks the highest quality of medical care possible, creates access to care for all, education for the medical workforce, and provides for financial accountability/responsibility.
- Educate: The Greenville Health Authority (GHA) has three oversight areas: management of hospitals and facilities, management of the well-being and autonomy of the patient-doctor relationship, and academic enhancement. Our goal is to foster the growth of those by encouraging more partnerships between the GHA, doctors and patients.
- Engage: This can be the start of an amazing dialogue that can be the beacon for other communities to follow when it comes to strengthening and developing a better community health care model.
- Encourage: This is a community effort. We need people from all sides of the health care continuum to come together to make this a reality.
So what does our name mean? In 1947, the S.C. Legislature created Act 432 to govern health care in Upstate South Carolina. We believe its spirit is universal — rooted in what every patient, physician and elected leader wants for their community.
The act created a political subdivision (special purpose district) governed by a board of trustees to facilitate access to health care and promote the well-being of the citizens of Greenville County and beyond. Through the years the trustees have been wise stewards of regional health — insisting that the management team and medical staff establish the best facilities and the highest standard of care possible, assure the primacy of the patient-doctor relationship, value the physician voice and support physician leadership unencumbered by corporate or governmental interference, provide access to care for all, commit to development of the future health care workforce through academics and maintain fiscal responsibility. These have become known as the operating ideals of Act 432.
In 2016, in an effort to achieve scale, the trustees (known now as the Greenville Health Authority) leased all assets of the political subdivision, including the facilities and its 2,000 physician/extender providers, to a private, nonprofit organization, for management. That needed to be done, but in doing so, parts of the spirit of the act got lost. Most notable of these were commitments to physician leadership, primacy of the patient-doctor relationship, and dedication to academics for development of the future workforce.
Our goal is to help the community help health care get that mission on track.
By working together, physicians, patients and community leaders can hold trustees and health systems accountable for fulfilling their obligations to our communities — and not just in the Upstate. Our message is one of statewide relevance. This is about what is best for the health of the residents of Greenville, the Upstate and all of South Carolina.
Dr. Bruce Snyder has spent his entire adult life dedicated to providing health solutions. He was named the South Carolina Medical Association’s Physician of the Year and earned the Order of the Palmetto, the state’s highest civilian honor, in 2016. He is the director of Physicians For Act 432.com.
