NEWBERRY — New MRI and CT scanners in Newberry. A mobile health van that will provide care in a dozen counties and in natural disaster situations across the state.

These are just some of the ways South Carolina plans to spend the $200 million in federal funding received this year as part of a new rural health program.

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Gov. Henry McMaster and other state officials traveled to Newberry Health hospital Tuesday to announce the federal grant awards made to rural healthcare providers and state agencies under the new Rural Health Transformation Program.

The program was created under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act as a way to help rural hospitals and healthcare organizations most heavily hit by upcoming Medicaid funding cuts under the law pushed through Congress by President Donald Trump’s administration.

“We have to keep our people healthy, keep them working, and that’s what this is aimed to do,” McMaster said.

Great need

The state Medicaid agency received 712 applications for the federal funding but ultimately only had enough money to approve 227 of them.

That includes Newberry Health, which received nearly $11 million for a dozen projects.

The 90-bed hospital’s magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI machine, is two decades old and in need of replacement. And its computed tomography, or CT scanner for short, doesn’t have heart health capabilities, leaving patients to instead travel an hour to Columbia or Greenville for cardiac related scans, said CEO John Snow.

The hospital had already planned to make the upgrades in the next couple years, but now it can use the federal dollars and spend its own money on other needs, Snow said.

“At the end of the day, it isn’t just about funding,” he said. “It’s about people and access and opportunity and making sure that high-quality healthcare remains close to home for generations to come.”

Newberry also will expand its operating rooms, upgrade its computer systems to protect against cyberthreats and add more physical security, a major priority for hospitals as healthcare staff regularly experience violence from unruly patients and family members in distress.

Lovelace Family Medicine, a private general care practice in Newberry, also will receive $1 million through the program to repave its parking lot, recruit and retain employees and update its IT.

In his 38 years in Newberry, Dr. Oscar Lovelace has seen major changes to the region’s healthcare landscape.

“I’ve seen a lot of progress but Fairfield County hospital is closed,” he said. “There’s no county hospital in Saluda. Laurens County hospital doesn’t deliver babies anymore, nor does Union County, so we’ve seen an obstetrical desert here.”

Lovelace also said technology upgrades are important, especially to primary care doctors who can spend late nights at home after hours on their computers updating patient records.

And AnMed in the Upstate announced that it had finally returned to normal operations Tuesday following a months-long recovery from a cybersecurity attack in which CEO William Kinley said cybercriminals accessed patients’ health information.

The state approved AnMed for $4 million in federal funding, including $1.7 million for IT improvements.

Telehealth too

Beyond hospitals and doctor’s offices, dollars are also going to telehealth organizations.

Palmetto Care Connections, a nonprofit telehealth network founded in 2010, wants to purchase its first mobile van to make house calls.

“We really believe that your zip code should not define the quality of life you live, or whether or not you have access to care,” CEO Kathy Schwarting.

The van also will be available for disaster recovery.

“If there’s a flood, if there’s a tornado, and folks don’t have access to care, we can take that mobile van and make sure they can connect to a primary or specialty care provider,” Schwarting added.

Schwarting has seen the loss of rural healthcare first hand. She previously worked at now-closed hospitals in Bamberg and Barnwell.

“It devastated our communities when that happened: lost jobs, people had to move, industries would no longer come in because you didn’t have a healthcare system,” she said. “And forget recruiting a provider because, without the support system of a hospital, they were not going to come to that community. I’ve seen it. I’ve lived it. It is devastating.”

Tight margins

South Carolina’s hospitals generally operate on margins between 0% and 4%, according to the state Hospital Association.

The margins for rural hospitals are the thinnest as they have a smaller population base over which to spread costs. They also tend to have a greater percentage of patients on Medicare and Medicaid.

In all, six rural hospitals in South Carolina have closed since 2010, according to a 2023 legislative study.

While hospitals are concentrated in South Carolina’s three major metro areas, all but five of the state’s 46 counties have at least one hospital or emergency center.

To aid the state’s rural healthcare providers, South Carolina doled out funds across eight categories: chronic disease, remote treatment and monitoring, expanding community care, facility improvements, workforce, mobile crisis response, IT and training.

Most of the money went to facility improvements, followed by IT.

The largest recipient was Self Regional Healthcare hospital system, which the state awarded nearly $31 million across eight hospitals.

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The state-run Medical University of South Carolina Health system received nearly $19 million across four rural hospitals and the health system at large.

Hampton Regional Medical Center in the Lowcountry received $13 million.

The state also held back funds to study South Carolina’s greatest rural health needs, state Department of Health and Human Services Director Eunice Medina said.

That study will help the agency decide how to distribute money over the next four years of the federal program.

“We have the basic assets,” McMaster said. “But we have to tie it all together, and we have to find the weak spots to see where some innovation, where some new equipment would help.”

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