Tod Ausberger, President and CEO of Lexington Medical Center was the guest speaker at the Greater Cayce-West Columbia Chamber Business meeting, Tuesday, at Stone River in West Columbia.

Ausberger characterized LMC as the only local and independent health care facility with its headquarters on Sunset Boulevard in West Columbia. He said it is one of the five largest hospitals in the state, with 450 physicians and 500-daily-patient-count.

Statewide, LMC is: second in the total number of births; third in total inpatient discharges; second in ER visits (91,294); and fifth in total surgeries.

LMC employed 7,994 in 2023, and 6,940 were full-time. The hospital added more than 43 physicians to its network in 2023 and plans to hire 49 new doctors in 2024. There were close to 1.6 million LMC physician office visits and close to 40,000 admissions and observations patients in 2023.

There are six LMC urgent care locations, including: Irmo, Chapin: Lexington; Saluda Pointe; Northeast Richland; and the newest urgent care facility opened on Jan. 3, in Cayce.

There were close to 185,000 urgent care visits to LMC facilities in 2023 and about 203,000 urgent care visits are expected in 2024.

Ausberger said the goal is for visits to the ER to be for true emergencies so that staff can direct care and resources to those is urgent distress. He said more education is needed to limit ER patients that would be OK to wait or go to an urgent care facility instead of the ER.

Ausberger said the USC nursing school being built across from LMC should be completed by the end of the summer. It will produce 400 nurse graduates a year. The physicians training facility at LMC introduced an inaugural class of 26 in July. Those medical students will be in the school for three years.