Now, HSSC plans a shift to new focus areas that relate more directly to improving patient care and population health.

Over the next several months, HSSC will formally develop a new strategic plan, which will help steer the organization during the next five years and beyond.

HSSC President and CEO Jay Moskowitz says that now is “a critical moment for HSSC,” as the organization reorients its assets—talent, technology, research data, and the like—in such a way as to ensure a direct impact on patients in the real world.

The reorientation includes the establishment of three “cores” of activity:

• The Analytics, Statistics, and Population Science Core, which will provide methodological and statistical support for HSSC’s research activities.
• The Evidence-based Care and Clinical Effectiveness Core, which will identify effective treatments, preventatives, and other health interventions (based on evidence gathered via HSSC’s academic health centers and clinical trials) that should be disseminated to the wider health care community.
• The Implementation Science Core, which will take findings from the Evidence-based Care and Clinical Effectiveness Core and determine the most effective ways to disseminate information about these more effective health interventions to doctors, nurses, and other professionals who treat patients in both urban and rural health care settings throughout South Carolina.

The process of developing HSSC’s new strategic plan will mean answering complex questions about HSSC’s future direction:

Coordinating implementation strategies to have the most impact: What are the unifying implementation science strategies that will have the greatest impact on the state’s research-intense universities, teaching hospitals, employees, and workforce?

How should HSSC coordinate its initiatives (for example, the regional extension center program to help clinical providers implement electronic health records (EHR) systems, information technology services, simulation training centers, stroke centers) together with other state assets (the Clinical and Translational Research Center at MUSC, USC’s Arnold School of Public Health, HSSC’s partnership with the S.C. Hospital Association) to improve care in South Carolina?

How can HSSC position its efforts in order to have the most success with national and regional funding sources (for example, National Institutes of Health, Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Agency for Healthcare Quality Research)?

Information Technology and its relationship to clinical care: What parts of HSSC’s clinical care and clinical research information technology infrastructure can be immediately implemented to improve the care experience, improve population health, and lead to more cost efficiencies? Should the strategic plan include short-, medium-, and long-term goals in this area?

How will HSSC's efforts with real-time data collection, data aggregation, data sharing, and analytics fit together with the missions and priorities of supporting and partner organizations? How do we make sure that our information technology systems are a unique and valuable asset for our supporting organizations and for the state?

Organizational structure: How should we structure all of HSSC’s various programs and their resources to best support the new initiatives and those of partner organizations?

Financial performance: What are the most appropriate financial and legal models that will allow HSSC to achieve financial stability and provide a return on investment for our hospitals and for other investors, such as The Duke Endowment?

Evaluation of progress: What metrics should we use to measure our performance? How often should we measure our progress, and what milestones should we use?

HSSC plans to have the new strategic plan complete by early 2012.