Skip to main content

Get to Know the South Carolina Office for Healthcare Workforce



Did you know that nurse practitioners are the fastest growing licensed health profession in South Carolina (Figure 1)? Or that in more than a third of South Carolina counties, the growth of physicians isn’t keeping up with population (Figure 2)? Data such as these are available thanks largely to the South Carolina Office for Healthcare Workforce.

The South Carolina Office for Healthcare Workforce, or OWH, is a statewide resource that studies the issues affecting the balance of supply and demand for different types of health professionals in South Carolina. Its mission is to develop accurate, reliable information about the state’s healthcare workforce and to make that information widely available to support planning and policy decisions. It routinely disseminates reports, maps and data briefs, as well as the South Carolina Health Professions Data Book. 

 The OHW was established in 2009 as a program within the South Carolina AHEC program office in Charleston with funding from The Duke Endowment. In 2016, OHW became a permanent statewide resource when South Carolina AHEC received recurring funding from the South Carolina Legislature to support OHW’s ongoing work.

In 2019, Katie Gaul came onboard as director of the OHW as Linda Lacey, the founding director, prepared for retirement after 10 years of service to the state. Katie leads the OHW team in identifying, gathering, analyzing and reporting data to create a better understanding of the current supply of nurses, physicians, pharmacists, dentists and other health professionals in South Carolina. OHW investigates how the supply of professionals may change in the future based on the education pipeline and changing health system and informs estimates of demand based on employment patterns, practice characteristics, and needs of the population.

The OHW team works closely with state agencies such as the Office of Revenue and Fiscal Affairs, SC DHEC’s Office for Primary Care, and the SC Department of Health and Human Services, as well as educational programs, employers and others to develop the information South Carolina stakeholders need to make informed policy decisions related to the healthcare workforce. As time and resources permit, the team also works with partners, such as the South Carolina EMS Association, on profession-specific studies.

Do you have a healthcare workforce question you would like studied or data you are seeking? The OHW team is always available as a resource for those looking at the state of the healthcare workforce. Reach out to the OHW team at scohw@musc.edu for more information.

Find OHW reports, maps, data briefs and more online at www.scohw.org, and sign up for the OHW e-news list to be notified of new data and reports as they are released. 

Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

Marchek Siblings Stay Connected With Upstate AHEC Through Academic Journey

 A pair of siblings from Greer are giving back to current Upstate AHEC Health Careers students after completing the program themselves. Alex Marchek, MD is in his first year as a family medicine resident at Prisma Health Seneca. His younger sister by two years, Anna Marchek, is a second-year medical student at Edward Via College of Medicine (VCOM) Carolinas. “My mom likes to say she did good,” Anna joked. “Both of her kids are going to be doctors. She went two-for-two.” Anna (left) and Alex (right) Marchek are pictured with Nita Donald, Executive Director of Upstate AHEC. While Alex and Anna have both chosen to pursue medicine as a career, their interest in healthcare developed differently. Alex describes his discovery of health sciences as a slow realization. “It was definitely something that was on my radar really young,” said Alex. “My parents will say when I was six years old, I was talking about doing something in medicine. I had some really great science teachers in elementar...
Read more

Pee Dee AHEC Clinical Placements Help Students See Challenges – and Opportunities – of Rural Primary Care

  Third-year medical student Omar Guerrero didn’t find his passion for a career in healthcare until he began shadowing health professionals as an undergraduate student. “I just knew that I really loved science and working with my hands,” said Guerrero, who double-majored in Public Health and Cellular & Molecular Biology while at the University of South Florida. It all clicked for him once he was able to observe physicians in their encounters with patients. “I saw there was a real need for Spanish-speaking physicians,” said Guerrero. “There’s a lot of disconnect between providers and Spanish-speaking patients and I thought that was definitely an area that I could make a difference in.” Now in his third year at A.T. Still University’s School of Osteopathic Medicine in Arizona, Guerrero is doing a clinical placement at Beaufort-Jasper-Hampton Comprehensive Health Services, Inc. in Richland. Guerrero was connected with Pee Dee AHEC and their Health Professions Student (HPS) program...
Read more

Simulation Training Prepares Students for Rural Primary Care

Since its inception in 2021, South Carolina AHEC’s Simulation Education Training (SET) has remained a favorite experience amongst health professions students statewide. Pee Dee AHEC Scholars and other health professions students pose for the camera during a simulation Since its inception in 2021, South Carolina AHEC’s Simulation Education Training (SET) has remained a favorite experience amongst health professions students statewide. SET uses simulation-based technology to expose students to clinical environments and scenarios that mirror what providers experience in rural, medically-underserved communities. “A lot of simulations are emergent or hospital-based and students are usually being graded as a formal assessment when they participate,” said SC AHEC Curriculum Coordinator Dawn Leberknight, who was heavily involved in the development of the initiative. “We tried to make [SET] more informal to expose students to simulations before it’s high stakes, and then to really focus on rura...
Read more