Largest South Carolina Hospitals by Beds in Service

Crossing over the Savannah River from Georgia, we have arrived in South Carolina in search of the largest hospitals in the state. The metric we will use for this blog is Acute beds in service. Acute would be beds for Med/Surg, Pediatrics, NICU, and ICU. With special certifications, Psych and Rehab beds can be considered sub-acute and are paid differently by Medicare.

Beds in services are the beds that are staffed by the hospital. This is sometimes a different number than licensed beds, which are the number of beds a hospital is licensed to operate.

Let’s see which hospitals have the most beds in South Carolina.

Medical University of South Carolina and GHS Greenville Memorial Hospital are tied for first. It’s very interesting that they have the exact same number of beds. Let’s see what else we can learn about some of the largest hospitals in South Carolina.

The Medical University of South Carolina’s website has a really good summary of the hospital, so I’ll just quote it here:

Founded in 1824, The Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) continues the tradition of excellence in education, research and patient care. MUSC educates and trains more than 3,000 students and 700 residents in six colleges and has nearly 13,000 employees, including approximately 1,500 faculty members. As the state’s only academic health science center and largest non-federal employer in Charleston, the university and its affiliates have collective annual budgets in excess of $2.4 billion, with an annual economic impact of nearly $4 billion and annual research funding in excess of $284 million. MUSC operates a 700-bed medical center, which includes a nationally recognized children’s hospital, the NCI-designated Hollings Cancer Center, a Level I trauma center, Institute of Psychiatry, more than 100 outreach locations across the state, and South Carolina’s only transplant center.¹

GHS Greenville Memorial Hospital opened its doors on January 10, 1912. It was Greenville, South Carolina’s first hospital. Three days later, the City Hospital Training School for Nurses was founded and accepted its first student. The 84-bed hospital has grown a lot since its beginning and even has an academic center, University of South Carolina School of Medicine Greenville.²

The third largest hospital is located in the state’s capital, Columbia, and is named Palmetto Richland. Well, actually it was acquired by Prisma Health, so it’s now called Prisma Health Richland Hospital. This hospital opened in 1892 and was one of the first hospital’s in the city. It is also a training location for University of South Carolina School of Medicine.³

In fourth place is McLeod Regional Medical Center located in Florence, South Carolina. The hospital opened in 1906 and a year later started The McLeod School of Nursing. Continuing with a strong belief in medical education the McLeod Family Medicine Residency Program began in 1980.⁴

Rounding out the top five is Spartanburg Regional Medical Center. The hospital opened on August 29, 1921 and Spartanburg General Hospital School of Nursing graduated its first class in 1922. In 1934, they opened the first local cancer clinic, making it one of the oldest American College of Surgeons (ACOS) Commission on Cancer-approved cancer programs in the nation. ⁵

Musing Revelation

The first thing that is interesting to me about these hospitals is that largest ones are not in the state’s capital city, Columbia. Rather, Charleston and Greenville claim that prize instead.

These hospitals are huge with 3 of them having well over 600 beds. Most have residency programs, which is great for training up the next generation of doctors.

I look forward to learning more about these hospitals in the next blog. Thanks for taking this journey with me!