South Carolina AHEC News & Updates

The Office for Healthcare Workforce Analysis and Planning in the South Carolina AHEC Program Office has released a data brief showcasing work done in collaboration with the South Carolina Office of Primary Care to identify naturally occurring primary care service areas in the state.   Primary care service areas (PCSAs) are small geographic areas that are relatively self-contained markets for primary care services. The 95 PCSAs identified in the study were developed using de-personalized 2013 billing data from the South Carolina State Employee Health Plan to identify patient travel patterns for primary care services.   Patient ZIP codes were matched with primary care provider ZIP codes to form the basis of the geographic service areas. An interactive map is available as part of the data brief. Users can find the name of their local PCSA based on their ZIP code and click on that area in the map to learn about local population characteristics, selected health status measur...

A recent study of the nursing workforce in South Carolina hospitals shows that the labor market for registered nurses (RNs) is tightening up. Chief nursing officers in South Carolina acute-care hospitals were asked to assess the local labor market for nursing personnel in their area and to describe how their nursing workforce needs are changing. Eighty percent of eligible hospitals responded to the survey. Like most employers, hospitals would prefer to hire experienced employees, but 88 percent of hospitals report that finding experienced RNs is becoming difficult.   Hospitals have also been hiring new RN graduates – 23 percent expect that new graduate hiring will be greater this year than last. When asked about specific types of nursing personnel, most hospitals said that recruitment was no more difficult this year than last. However, 47 percent of hospitals that utilize clinical nurse specialists said they were becoming more difficult to find; 38 percent of hospitals sai...

When physicians complete both their medical education and residency training in South Carolina, the great majority of them remain in the state to practice. 1 Due to the creation of two new medical schools in the state in recent years, the Office of Healthcare Workforce Analysis and Planning expects a substantial increase in the number of in ‐ state medical school graduates beginning in 2015. The chart below illustrates the rapid growth in the number of medical school graduates expected in the next few years and the relatively slow growth in the number of residency program slots available for first-year residents. Data sources: Graduate counts from the various medical schools in South Carolina were obtained from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System for the years 2007 through 2013. Future years are estimates based on the number of first year enrollees reported to us by the schools four years prior to the graduation year, assuming a 92% c...