SCSQC Leadership

Dr. Bruce Crookes grew up in northern New Jersey in the New York metropolitan area. He graduated with a degree in biophysics from the University of Michigan. He then attended the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City, graduating in 1996. He then completed a residency in general surgery at Abington Memorial Hospital in Pennsylvania, where he fell in love with trauma and critical care. Dr. Crookes then attended the prestigious Ryder Trauma Center at the University of Miami, where he completed a trauma and critical care fellowship. Upon completion of his fellowship, Dr. Crookes joined the faculty at the University of Vermont College of Medicine and rose to the position of trauma medical director. In 2009, he joined the faculty at the Medical University of South Carolina in the same role.  He served as the Chief of the Division of General Surgery at MUSC from 2016 – 2025, and now serves as the Associate Chief Quality Officer over Perioperative Services for the MUSC Health System.  He is the Principle Investigator for the South Carolina Surgical Quality Collaborative, a multi-institutional collaborative whose principle aim is to improve surgical outcomes for patients in the state of South Carolina.

To date, he continues to be a busy surgical intensivist, trauma surgeon, and general surgeon. He is recognized nationally as a leader in the care of the injured and is the former president of the nation’s largest academic trauma society — the Eastern Association for the Surgery of Trauma. Clinically, Dr. Crookes has a myriad of interests, including hernias, complex abdominal wall reconstruction, robotic and minimally invasive surgery (particularly for hernia repair), pulmonary embolisms and venous thromboembolic disease, acute care surgery robotics, and complex general surgery.

Prabhakar Baliga, M.D. FACS is the Chair of the MUSC Department of Surgery, where he leads a range of programs and services spanning ten clinical divisions and the Department’s research and education divisions. He is a solid organ transplant surgeon who specializes in living donor kidney transplantation in children and adults. Dr. Baliga has conducted HRSA and NIH-funded clinical research studies related to understanding the barriers to and facilitators of organ donation and the effective medical management of transplant recipients.

He serves on the Board of Governors for the American College of Surgeons (ACS) as the Surgical Specialty Society Governor from the Southern Surgical Association. He has served on the Board of Life Point, the National Board of the Organ Procurement and Transplant Network, the Board for the United Network for Organ Sharing, and the Board of Directors for the South Carolina chapter of the National Kidney Foundation.

Mr. Deans serves as a c-level executive with demonstrated successes in the healthcare and defense industries. With over 30 years of workplace experience, he is skilled in leadership, strategic planning, business development and corporate operations.

In August of 2017, Health Sciences South Carolina (HSSC) named Mr. Deans as President & Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the nation’s first statewide biomedical and health research organization. HSSC, which was established in 2004, and today with offices and subsidiary companies in North and South Carolina, is an inclusive public-private organization that brings together and serves the state’s most prominent research-intensive universities including Clemson University, Medical University of South Carolina, and the University of South Carolina, as well as, most of the state’s largest health care systems, and other non-profit and industry partners to further clinical research, public and population health, quality improvement, and health data exchange initiatives across the Carolinas.

Prior to joining HSSC, Ken served in the capacity of Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Chesapeake Regional Healthcare (CRH), a not-for-profit healthcare system located in Chesapeake, Virginia. He served as their Chief Information Officer and Chief Compliance Officer, before serving as their COO. Before relocating and living in Virginia, Mr. Deans served as the Vice President and CIO of Bassett Healthcare, an integrated delivery network of 6 hospitals and nearly 40 health centers in central New York state. Prior to Bassett Healthcare, he served in various technical management and leadership capacities, including Director of Technology at Greenwich Hospital, a member of the Yale-New Haven Health System, positioned in Greenwich, Connecticut.

Ken received his MBA (Beta Gamma Sigma) from the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, VA, and Bachelor of Science from Excelsior College in Albany, NY. He is also a graduate of the Executive Nonprofit Leadership program at Harvard Kennedy School, John F. Kennedy School of Government in Cambridge, MA. He enjoys boating, camping, cycling, hiking and various other outdoor adventures, especially those that involve travel.

Shawn Stinson serves as Senior Vice President of Healthcare Innovation and Improvement at BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina. In this role, he is responsible for clinical programs including care management, value-based reimbursement, quality, pharmacy, clinical informatics, and medical staff affairs. Prior to joining BlueCross BlueShield, he was a practicing internist and the Chief Quality & Patient Safety Officer of Palmetto Health (now known as Prisma Midlands).

A native of Greensboro, NC, Dr. Stinson earned his undergraduate degree from the University of North Carolina-Greensboro. He attended medical school at Duke University and completed his internship and residency training at The Johns Hopkins Hospital in Internal Medicine. After residency training, he began his career on the faculty at Hopkins in 1991 where he remained until coming to the University of South Carolina School of Medicine in 1995. He continues in the role of adjunct associate professor at the USC medical school where he lectures on clinical applications of physiology principles.

He is a Fellow in the American College of Physicians and is board-certified in Internal Medicine. Since coming to BlueCross in 2014, Dr. Stinson has been working on efforts to advance value-based reimbursement and population health.

Nan leads high reliability efforts of the South Carolina Hospital Association (SCHA) as the Manager of Zero Harm Programming. She serves as the project lead for the Certified Zero Harm program, providing technical assistance and expertise to hospitals striving to reach zero harm in their facilities. Additionally, Nan provides support to the innovation team by leading and supporting special community-based projects related to Healthy People, Healthy Carolinas (HPHC) and AccessHealth of SC (AHSC) including the Community Health Workers Changing Outcomes grant and the Food is Medicine (FiM) Landscape Assessment.

Prior to joining SCHA, she served as the Community Outreach Specialist for PRISMA Health Office of Population Health and the Director of Development, Cancer Services at Palmetto Heath (now PRISMA Health Midlands) Foundation. Originally from Florence, SC, she moved to Columbia, SC in 2000 to pursue a Bachelor of Arts (BA) in Behavioral Science and a double minor in Leadership Studies and Communication from Columbia College and a Master of Public Health (MPH) from the University of South Carolina. She is an active member of the Junior League of Columbia and SC Public Health Association and currently lives in Lexington, SC with her husband and two children.