In October 1997, the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) developed its first recorded five-year strategic plan. This plan began a tradition of highlighting the richness and diversity of the university community, but it also began a legacy of offering insights about the core values of the institution. Whether stated explicitly or implied through the directions this early plan proposed, these values clearly reveal the university’s mission -- to preserve and optimize human life. A major update was achieved in 2003 and this last revision presents new changes with the view that MUSC’s Strategic Plan is a “living document” that reflects an evolving University. 
| The Medical University engages in three interrelated activities Education, Research,
and Service. |
As an academic institution, the Medical University engages in three interrelated activities -- education, research, and service. These activities take place within the context of local, regional, and national communities. MUSC is an educational institution dedicated to teaching health professionals and biomedical scientists with an emphasis on graduate and post-graduate programs. As a research institution, it advances new knowledge and contributes significantly to biomedical, behavioral and health-related investigations. As a clinical institution, MUSC provides the highest quality care, makes available treatments that may be unavailable elsewhere, and serves many who need care but do not have the means to afford it. These interrelated activities require careful planning and sensitivity to the consequences of change. To fulfill this tripartite mission, the University is modifying its information and business infrastructure to achieve a successful transition as new educational models come into focus, as investigational breakthroughs occur, and as health care systems evolve. This Strategic Plan provides the supporting infrastructure for this transition.
Primary issues facing the groups charged with articulating a five-year strategic plan were, how to articulate the complexity of the university goals and objectives in the context of the changing environment, as well as how to communicate and interact with the public it serves. By its very nature, a strategic plan must establish broad norms and realistic expectations; it should encourage creativity; it should allow flexibility; and it should serve as a context for operational decision-making. This Strategic Plan emphasizes the responsibilities inherent in the social contract between the Medical University and its constituents. This Plan outlines approaches to addressing the health needs of South Carolinians beyond simply preparing an educated health care workforce, which our charter mandates. As an academic health center, we must strive to advance understanding of health and disease, and to provide a broad spectrum of health care services. This Strategic Plan encourages innovative approaches to direct communication of health information to the public. Excellence in all three of our missions -- education, research, and clinical service -- is paramount to achieving the goals stated in three of the four specific focus areas described in this Strategic Plan. Our education mission, which emphasizes graduate and postgraduate programs, must provide the highest quality education for students, professionals, and the people of the State by instilling interprofessional competencies and values, fostering lifelong learning, and improving public access to health information. Recruitment and retention of outstanding investigators are critical to maintaining our nationally recognized, premier research institution in selected fields of study. There is no question that MUSC must address the continuing need to encourage interprofessional collaboration, and to strengthen and expand the systems that support research endeavors, i.e., providing state-of-the-art laboratories, processing grants efficiently, and facilitating the transfer of new knowledge to commercial and public benefit. MUSC will continue to provide the highest quality health care to South Carolinians through its network of primary and specialty care providers. Our challenge is to reduce the health needs of the State’s citizens by promoting integration of appropriate health care systems and ensuring that interprofessional teams are available at clinical and research sites to serve the education and research missions. This 2007 Update of the Strategic Plan through its focus areas advocates patient- and community-centered clinical care systems that involve comprehensive, coordinated practices, fully integrated across professions and colleges. Equally important is the recognition that those services are supported by excellence in related educational and research programs. This Updated Strategic Plan had its genesis from an earlier publication from the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control entitled Healthy People Living in Healthy Communities. This 2001 publication provided an in-depth look at South Carolinian health issues “beyond disease trends and environmental data” and encouraged an approach wherein health agencies must interact directly with communities to enable them to address their current health needs. The last focus area addresses issues that need immediate attention and clarifies the process involved in providing the management tools necessary to establish priorities and allocations of scarce resources. As a road map to the future, this Strategic Plan necessarily will imply modifications to the University budget and resource allocation process. It is understood that the resources required to achieve these objectives are substantial and cannot be derived from state allocations alone. Increasingly, the future success of the Medical University will depend upon the ability of the institution to secure funding from federal, corporate, and foundation sources, patient care activities, and individual philanthropies. In summary, the Medical University is committed to pursuing the highest quality in its threefold mission: interprofessional education of health care providers and biomedical scientists; continuous advancement of scientific knowledge; and the improvement of health through public education, outreach, and service. The elements of this threefold mission are inextricably linked to one another and collectively sustain the vitality and viability of the university. This Strategic Plan attempts to define the interdependence of these mission elements and recognize the delicate balance the institution must maintain to achieve its overall purpose. And finally, the institution realizes the need to communicate clearly and effectively its plans, goals, and objectives to members of its own community and to the public; in so doing, the Medical University will preserve the trust of the people of South Carolina and the nation.
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