South Carolina Department of Public Health asks committee for recurring staff and program funding to speed inspections, expand maternal services and modernizeIT

The South Carolina Department of Public Health asked the Healthcare Subcommittee of the House Ways and Means Committee on an unspecified date for a package of recurring and one‑time funds aimed at shortening inspection times, expanding maternal services and strengthening frontline public‑health programs.

Dr. Ed Simmer, director of the South Carolina Department of Public Health, told the committee the agency’s top recurring request is $4.6 million and 22 new full‑time positions to conduct comprehensive inspections, resolve complaints faster and add a “collaboration team” that would help facilities improve without adversarial enforcement. He said complaints against health facilities have risen 35% since 2020 and that, because of staffing limits, complaint resolution currently takes 50–77 days rather than the agency’s 30‑day goal.

The department also requested recurring and one‑time funding for maternal and infant health: $1.25 million recurring and $1.6 million one‑time to operate and support a mobile maternity unit and to run the HearHer public education campaign statewide. Dr. Simmer said the mobile unit will be contracted to an existing medical system so patients have a place to deliver, and that the unit would provide prenatal and postnatal care, ultrasound, doula services when available, and mental‑health and substance‑use screening.

Dr. Simmer described a separate frontline staffing request of about $4.3 million and additional FTEs to support work on tuberculosis, rabies and sexually transmitted infections. He told the committee tuberculosis active cases are up about 40% and latent TB up 58% since 2020; he said treatment can be lengthy and expensive. He also said rabies cases have increased about 18% statewide and that syphilis has risen about 80%, with congenital syphilis up roughly 800% since 2015.

The department requested one‑time funds of about $16 million to modernize legacy IT systems, improve cybersecurity and replace decades‑old mainframes the agency said still require paper processes. Dr. Simmer said the IT modernization is coordinated with the Department of Administration’s IT shared services but exceeds shared services’ current scope.

Separately, the agency asked the subcommittee to authorize spending an anticipated $12 million in federal WIC (Women, Infants and Children Nutrition Program) funds; Dr. Simmer told members that authorization would let the department obligate those federal dollars when they arrive.

Committee members pressed agency officials on staffing and recruitment. Gwen Thompson, director for health care quality at the department, said the unit would be fully staffed at about 200 people but current staffing sits at approximately 162 and turnover has been high. She and Dr. Simmer told members the agency has limited one‑time carryover funds and that contracting inspections has proven costly and less effective than using agency staff for state inspections.

The department framed the requests as steps to reduce inspection delays, expand prenatal and postnatal care access in counties without obstetric providers, and to ensure public‑health teams can investigate infectious‑disease cases and contact networks promptly. No formal committee vote was recorded in the transcript.

The department provided data, staffing targets and program descriptions during the presentation and Q&A; members asked follow‑up questions about recruitment, use of one‑time carryover funds, and coordination with federally qualified health centers and hospital systems for the mobile maternity unit.