Now, the state has 500 people for every doctor. About the same percentage of MUSC and USC graduates who stay in the state practice in those doctor-rich counties. A number of poor, rural counties are short on doctors, especially those with a lot of people living in poverty. Faulkner and his MUSC counterpart Dr. Layton McCurdy wrote a report in 1998 detailing the medical work force in South Carolina. The report found that, while the state has enough physicians overall, they are not distributed evenly.
Some counties have a tremendous surplus and others a huge shortage.
While the 1998 report projected a 3 percent surplus in physicians in 2000, it forecast a 27 percent surplus in specialists and a 21 percent shortage in primary care doctors. Both schools say the majority of their students go into primary care fields. Over the last five years, nearly 60 percent of MUSC College of Medicine graduates have gone into those same fields, according to the university's figures. Officials with both colleges say there's little they can do to determine whether graduates go into primary care practice, or if they do post-graduate work to become specialists. And they say hometowns and medical residency sites do more to determine where doctors practice than the medical school's location.