ATLANTA — The University System of Georgia Board of Regents voted unanimously Friday to approve a partnership between the Wellstar and Augusta University health systems.
The partnership will expand the university’s health sciences training and research across the state and build a broader affiliation between Wellstar and the university’s Medical College of Georgia (MCG).
The boards of Wellstar and the Augusta University Health System (AUHS) signed off on a 40-year partnership agreement earlier this week.
“This partnership, I believe, will truly be transformational for health care in this state,” said Gov. Brian Kemp, who began working on a potential partnership between Wellstar and AUHS during his first year in office in 2019 only to be interrupted by the pandemic.
To be known as Wellstar MCG Health, the partnership will expand medical training, research and clinical care throughout Georgia while bringing together community-based health systems and academic medical centers like MCG and its affiliate hospitals.
Kemp said increasing Georgia’s health-care workforce, which is suffering shortages that became glaringly apparent during the pandemic, is a top priority of the new partnership. It also aims at expanding access to health care — particularly in rural Georgia — through the use of digital technology.
“New digital health offerings will help us care for patients wherever they are,” Wellstar CEO Candice Saunders said. “Through this partnership, we will train more physicians to help address a critical shortage of clinicians in our state.”
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