New medical school in Greenville welcomes charter class
Contact Wes Hickman, whickman@mailbox.sc.edu, 803-777-3478
Three years ago, when the University of South Carolina and the Greenville Hospital System were discussing plans for a new medical school in the Upstate, USC President Harris Pastides issued a challenge to “make this medical school different and special.”
USC and GHS took a giant step in fulfilling that promise Tuesday (July 31, 2012) when they welcomed the charter class of the new USC School of Medicine Greenville located on the campus of GHS’s Greenville Memorial Hospital campus.
Dr. Jerry Youkey, the dean of USC School of Medicine Greenville, said the vision of the new medical school is to create a different type of physician capable of leading and participating in the transformation of America’s health care delivery system. “We coined the phrase ‘A new school of thought’ as it reflects our commitment to preparing doctors who will connect with communities, patients, colleagues and technology in new, more progressive ways,” Youkey said.
The new medical school is the first in South Carolina’s Upstate. It joins the USC School of Medicine in Columbia and the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston.
According to Pastides, the USC School of Medicine Greenville comes at a critical juncture for the state and nation. The United States is in the midst of a growing physician shortage, and with an aging population and millions of Americans expected to receive health insurance as a result of healthcare reform, the current delivery system will have to change to meet demand. The nation also must add capacity to educate and train physicians.
“You don’t have to go any further than news headlines to see that we need more qualified doctors and we need them quickly. This is particularly true in South Carolina, where nearly every county has too few primary care doctors and some specialties like neurology are in critically low supply. Not increasing our capacity to educate the next generation of physicians is, quite simply, not an option. We must do it now,” Pastides said.