In the two years since Augusta University and Wellstar Health System formally signed an agreement on August 30, 2023, the historic partnership has continued to evolve into a truly collaborative alliance.

At its heart, the mission hasn’t changed: improving the health and wellbeing of all Georgians while educating and preparing the next generation of health care providers through access to world-class training.

That was the message shared by Augusta University President Russell T. Keen, Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University Dean David C. Hess, MD, and former Wellstar President and CEO Candice L. Saunders at the recent Health Connect South conference held at the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta.

During their panel “Advancing Healthcare Through Public-Private Partnerships,” the three leaders – each instrumental in helping to create, implement and mold the historic partnership – shared with close to 1,100 attendees their insight into what makes the partnership beneficial for all and how it can be a model for advancing health care and health care education in Georgia and beyond.

“The partnership really is just beginning in so many ways, and we are very thankful for the forward thinking of University System of Georgia Chancellor Sonny Perdue and the Board of Regents, Gov. Brian P. Kemp and the General Assembly for helping to facilitate this,” Keen said. “It took a huge effort to make this happen and it has helped us approach things differently in terms of how we’re going to deliver health care and health care training across the board to the entire state.”

During the discussion with Cheryl Preheim, an anchor for 11Alive News in Atlanta, each touched on the different benefits that have been seen and also addressed how the partnership is constantly evolving. A few of the highlights have included a new hospital coming to Columbia County and new training opportunities for health care professionals, medical students, fellows and residents at Wellstar hospitals and clinics across the state, including the newly opened MCG Atlanta at Wellstar Health System campus at Wellstar Kennestone Regional Medical Center in Marietta.

For Saunders, she approached the partnership as a way to combine two organizations through a shared mission.

“We really do see this as a partnership that’s grounded in our shared mission of improving the health and wellbeing of those we serve. We see a different future for health care, and we believe that this partnership will allow us to create a healthier future for all Georgians,” she said. “I think that’s a very important component here, that by working together and leveraging all of our strengths, that we will be able to see improvement in the health outcomes for our fellow Georgians, as well as continuing to ensure that we have the physicians and the health care workers to take care of our families, our neighbors and our community.”

The partnership brought together two organizations with long histories of offering care and training to the state.

Wellstar Health System was officially established in 1993 through the merger of several hospitals, and in the years since, it has grown to touch every corner of the state, becoming nationally recognized for its comprehensive care, innovation and commitment to community well-being. Today, Wellstar offers care through an extensive network of 11 hospitals, 329 medical office locations, 11 cancer centers, 91 rehabilitation centers, 35 imaging centers, 20 urgent care locations, five health parks, three hospice facilities and two retirement villages.

MCG’s statewide educational model offers students the opportunity to experience the full spectrum of medicine, from complex care hospitals to small-town solo practices. As the state’s flagship medical college, founded in 1828, MCG has grown to be the fourth-largest medical school in the nation by class size, with regional clinical campuses for third- and fourth-year students across the state, as well as two other four-year campuses – in Athens in partnership with the University of Georgia, and in Savannah in partnership with Georgia Southern University.

MCG also offers the innovative MCG 3+ Program which gives students the chance to tailor-make their educational experience, providing a more efficient pathway into primary care for some students and opening up pathways for physicians to stay in Georgia and help some of the counties where they are needed most.

Those strong histories mean there is unlimited potential, according to Saunders, but it starts with access.

“It really centers around access, but it’s not just access to care, because what we continue to learn is that you also have to have access to expertise in the communities throughout Georgia,” she said. “The other thing is, we have to expand the pipeline of health care workers. We all have a mission and a duty to do that.”

Cultivating and refining that pipeline and ensuring those already working in health care have access to continuing education and training opportunities is critical for a state like Georgia that ranks 40th in the nation in physicians per capita. And Hess pointed out that even within that ranking, there are pockets of the state and region that are hit even harder, but it’s what makes the 3+ Pathway program and the partnership with Wellstar even more important.

“Much of South Georgia is severely short of physicians, and one of the things that really supplies physicians to these areas is undergraduate medical education, but also GME, or graduate medical education,” said Hess. “When I first met Candice in 2017, one of the attractions with Wellstar was they had started a lot of graduate medical education programs. And of course, we have a big GME program (at Wellstar MCG Health in Augusta), and they were starting them in many areas. There’s good data that if you go to medical school here, and you do your residency in Georgia, the chance of you staying is over 70% and we’re in the top 20 in the country for GME programs. So, we really wanted to look for a partner that had GME slots, because we really want our students to do their residency training in Georgia.”

Hess noted how Wellstar is currently home to 270 residents, MCG 620 and there are 900 between Emory and Grady Health System. That is close to 1,800 total resident physicians in Georgia, to cover all the different disciplines of medicine. Other states like Ohio and North Carolina have three or four academic medical centers and are able to train even more residents.

“One of the missions of the Medical College of Georgia is to improve the health of all Georgians, no matter where they live. Not just Atlanta, not just Augusta, but in South Georgia and each rural county,” Hess said.

Another way that Augusta University and Wellstar are working to improve the health of all Georgians is by expanding telehealth offerings and expanding what is feasible with care through innovation. While some rural counties don’t have a single primary care physician, one of the ways to bridge that gap is through access to physicians through telehealth. Both groups are working tirelessly to increase access and the way health care can be delivered, connecting the resources of a statewide medical school and an academic medical center to those who have health care needs.

“How can we transform how we deliver health care? That’s something that both Augusta University and Wellstar have been working on,” Keen said. “The General Assembly and the governor approved the use of the Epic electronic medical record, and we’re working on how to use that data to prediagnose diseases from a research standpoint. We’re focused on this every day, along with leveraging entities like the Georgia Cancer Center in Augusta, with its clinical platform, and our eight regional campuses throughout the state, including WellStar. Our goal is to deliver more clinical trials to Georgians, helping people stay healthier, so they don’t have to leave the state for treatment if they have a disease like cancer. Through this partnership, we can offer them the latest and best in medicine.”

As the three leaders spoke on stage about the many benefits emerging from the partnership, 10 students from Augusta University in the audience were already experiencing those benefits firsthand. Five were first-year medical students at MCG’s four-year campus in Savannah, while the other five were from AU’s School of Public Health.

For Anna Jackson and Abbey Giesler, both students at MCG Savannah, the chance to get a leg up on understanding the landscape of health care in the state was important to them, including better understanding the partnership between their school and a health care system like Wellstar.

“The opportunity is really unique. The ability to get a better understanding of what’s going on in the state in terms of business and partnerships and AI and all the advancements that are happening as we start our medical journeys, it’s a good foundation for our learning,” Jackson said following the presentation. “We have heard a lot about how the older physicians are going to be advancing out, and we’re going to be the ones that they’re focusing on training to adapt to the state of health care in Georgia. So, it’s good to get a better picture, since we’re the ones that are going to be doing it.”

“It’s kind of planting the seeds in our mind of what problems exist and how we can already come up with ideas now of how we can solve them,” Geisler said. “So when we advance in our careers, we have the tools, the resources and the capabilities of being able to go out and solve those problems. It starts here in our first year of medical education.”

While they won’t necessarily be in the emergency rooms or directly treating patients, Albert Okrah and Theophilus Gabriel, both students in the PhD in Applied Health Sciences program in AU’s School of Public Health, saw the conference as a way to begin to truly understand what makes public health in Georgia unique.

“There are a lot of opportunities in terms of people you can meet in industry, and also researchers or academics. And so I’m looking at discussions towards how we can merge health care and also research and all the opportunities that are there,” Okrah said. “That’s what drew me here find out what are the current challenges, what are the things that are being done to solve those problems and how I can also contribute towards that.”

“What actually drew me to this conference is to come and learn more about the underlying problems that have actually been a challenge in the health care system,” Gabriel said. “And I see it as an opportunity to be able to see how we could actually work with the practice in health care and the research in health, how we can actually match them together to be able to come up with a stronger solutions in kind of solving health care problems for the community. I’m drawn to community prevention, which is why I’m actually here to connect with people of like minds and be able to learn more about how to able to improve the health of the community.”

For Keen, the students’ takeaways highlight the broader mission of uniting education, research and care to improve health across Georgia.

“At Augusta University and Wellstar, our culture is about never being satisfied — always looking for ways to improve patient care, education and research,” Keen said. “As the health care workforce ages, it’s our mission to prepare the next generation to meet those challenges and to make life better for Georgians and beyond.”