AnMed and MUSC broaden partnership

AnMed has announced a new affiliation with MUSC to provide enhanced access to leading medical treatment while optimizing the exceptional care already in place.

Through this partnership, the two health systems will identify opportunities to expand and improve access to services, recruit physicians and lower costs for patients in the greater Anderson community.

The first collaboration between the organizations will expand the In Our DNA SC community health research project, and it will position AnMed and MUSC Health to take advantage of future strategic initiatives.

In Our DNA SC examines how DNA affects health, and it will work to improve access to personalized health care while supporting new research discoveries for the community.

“While MUSC and AnMed are separate organizations, we have found creative ways to collaborate so that our local communities can be healthier easier,” said William Kenley, CEO of AnMed. “As rising health care costs impact families, this partnership will enable our organizations to ensure services and access are growing. It’s possible because AnMed and MUSC share true commitment to the mission of providing exceptional care. Our understanding of our community and the issues it faces uniquely positions AnMed to meet community needs, and this collaboration moves us further ahead in providing the very best of the latest developments here at home.”

In Our DNA SC aims to enroll 100,000 participants in genetic testing at no cost. Patients and their doctors will receive confidential results about genetic risk for certain cancers and heart disease. The project will also develop a secure and privacy-protected genetic and research database. Over time, the information in this database will help researchers learn what may cause certain diseases, how to treat them more effectively, and it will help improve the standard of health care for all.

Learn more at web.musc.edu/inourdnasc/.

“At MUSC Health, we believe that our role is to help enable local providers to deliver the right care in the right place and at the right time,” said Dr. Patrick J. Cawley, M.D., CEO of MUSC Health and executive vice president of Health Affairs, University. “We are taking our relationship to a new level with AnMed, and we are very excited to augment the great care already provided there with new connectivity and services.”

AnMed, the 115-year-old, not-for-profit health system serving Upstate South Carolina and northeast Georgia, established its relationship with MUSC in 2014, when the organizations announced an agreement for AnMed, based in Anderson, to become the first branch campus of the medical school based in Charleston. Selected third and fourth-year medical students at MUSC complete their final two years of education at AnMed through the partnership.

The organizations’ deeper affiliation supplements and enhances the comprehensive, dynamic services already in place at AnMed, an independent health system anchored by AnMed Medical Center, one of only 591 in the nation in the American Nurses Credentialing Center’s Magnet Recognition Program.