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Members:
Representative Eugene C. Stoddard, Chairman
422B, Blatt Building
Columbia, South Carolina 29211

Representative Jennings G. McAbee
522C Blatt Building
Columbia, South Carolina 29211

Representative Curtis B. Inabinett
328D Blatt Building
Columbia, South Carolina 29211

THE CHAIRMAN: Several of our committee members have other appointments this morning and will be coming in. First, I would like to thank all of you for taking an interest in your fellow man by serving with such low pay. We certainly appreciate your dedication and your interest in public service.

We're going to start this morning with those candidates who are unopposed. We have reports from SLED on all you on your background. Thankfully, you all came up positive. So as I call your name, would you please stand? Darlene Hyman. William G. Stevens. Martha S. Whitener. Glenn J. Lawhon. Morgan B. Coker. Estelle M. Mauldin. Bobby M. Bowers. We caught Ms. Mauldin last week. Thomas C. Rowland, Jr. Stanley C. Baker, Jr. Herbert C. Granger. Robert C. Lake, Jr. Margaret M. Addison. Charles C. Lewis. Bishop Johnnie M. Smith. Lord, what a list. Othniel H. Wienges. A.S. Bahnmuller. William C. Hubbard. Tony J. Lister. Donald A. Bailey. Michael J. Mungo. C. Edward Floyd. Mack I. Whittle. Is Faye Edwards present?

You may feel free to leave at any time that you desire. You'll be notified of the Screening Committee's actions in the near future. The tentative date for elections is the 13th or the 20th. We are undecided which of next month. We certainly appreciate your attendance. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.

I have some real concerns about what's happening in health care and where the health care system is heading. I feel it's extremely important that we have somebody that's knowledgeable about -- in the future of health care that can advise the medical university on -- I have served as a vice chairman of AMA delegation, South Carolina Medical Association, the AMA and am knowledgeable about what's happening all over the country. Unfortunately, we're behind California in a lot of ways, but managed care is here and primary care is scaring the medical universities and the private physicians as far as the entrance into health care.

There is a battle going on in Charleston right now as you well know that I don't think is good for the medical university or good for the private physicians. I think that the board is going to need some leadership in how

The medical universities all over the country are seeing patients that they're getting tied into HMOs that can't come to them and they can't survive without the patients. They can't teach students without the patients. The private physicians are concerned that these networks are going to dry up their patients and they're not going to be able to survive and it's got to be a happy medium.

I don't think the private physicians should say the medical university we're just going to send you the tertiary care. They're going to have to survive. We've got to teach our primary care doctors and they'd have to deal with private patients. And since the entrance into health care as a family physician in which people really didn't realize in the past. The family physicians realized it, but now everybody realizes it, to get into any kind of subspecialty care, you've got to go through your primary care doctor first.
Q. What is your specialty?
A. I'm in family practice.
Q. So that is of considerable interest to you?
A. It certainly is. I think, you know, the medical university realizes that family practice is the interest. They are looking at family physicians as an entrance into patients into the medical university.

The private physicians in the subspecialty area are scared about losing primary care doctors because that's what feeds the subspecialty areas. And I think we can work those situations out, but we can't do the amount that it's going on in Charleston right now.
Q. Thank you.
THE CHAIRMAN: Any other questions of the doctor? Thank you, Doctor.
A. Thank you.
THE CHAIRMAN: Our next candidate for Seat 1 is Doctor Donald R. Johnson. Doctor Johnson, would you raise your hand please.
DONALD R. JOHNSON, II, M.D., having been duly sworn, testified as follows:

And I think because of this, there have been people in both of these different communities that have come to me and wondered if I could maybe be a bridge or liaison between these two groups.

Right -- right now unfortunately as Doctor Brake alluded to there is a very bad argument, debate, if you will, between the private practitioners in Charleston and the University. And I think it's ultimately going to hurt both groups. The only way that this can be a winning situation for the Medical University, and it must be and the private doctors is that if they work together cooperatively. And right now they're not doing that. I think that's very unfortunate.
Q. My impression is that the Medical University needs, I won't say unusual cases, but they need things to broaden the scope of the experience of the people that they're training. Have they gone beyond that, are you saying, in looking for the, let's say, mass type of patient flow to the Medical University?

Additionally, the University hospital is a great cost center meaning that in any health care plan or health care reform, the hospital itself is going to be a driving cost to escalate prices. The University really is trying to move as all of medicine is outside of the sub-subspecialists and to come back more to primary care type medicine. And that's right now where they're extending their tentacles, if you will, and that's where they're kind of crossing paths with the private docs in the community.
Q. They're extending their tentacles sounds to me like they're going beyond the service of specialized cases to expand the experience of the -- of their students?
A. Well, I think they are doing that and I think they have to do that. And they're also expanding outside the traditional walls of the University. For instance, they are -- they're building primary care offices in other parts of the tri-county area in places that traditionally, they had not had a presence.

And so if you have a private community say Mount Pleasant, 20 miles away and then the University builds their branch there so to speak, the private docs react to that and that's -- that's the nucleus of the debate that's going on right now.
Q. Thank you very much.
THE CHAIRMAN: Any other questions?
SENATOR MACAULAY: No, Mr. Chairman.
THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Doctor.
A. Thank you.
THE CHAIRMAN: Next we have Seat 3 a contest in the Lander University Board. Our first candidate would be Maurice Holloway. Mr. Holloway.
MR. HOLLOWAY: Yes, sir.
THE CHAIRMAN: Would you raise your hand, please.
MAURICE HOLLOWAY, having been duly sworn, testified as follows:
THE CHAIRMAN: Considering your present occupation or other activities, will you be able to attend board meetings on a regular basis?
A. Yes, I will.
THE CHAIRMAN: Do you have any health related problems that the Screening Committee should be made aware of that would prevent you from serving in a regular basis?
A. I don't.

| Printed Page 3970, Apr. 5 | Printed Page 3990, Apr. 5 |