USC is meeting a growing demand for medical care in South Carolina with the construction of a brand-new Health Sciences Campus located in the Bull Street District.
The campus is set to open in 2027. It will serve as the new home for the USC School of Medicine Columbia.
USC has also started construction on a new Brain Health Center and Neuroscience Hospital and Rehabilitation Center, which will be part of the campus. These facilities are designed to treat an anticipated increase in neurological diseases, particularly with the rapidly growing elderly population in the state, Stacy Fritz, associate vice president for student health and well-being and chief health officer, said.
“(The campus) is going to ensure this steady pipeline of highly skilled physicians and rehab specialists that’s really going to meet the growing demand for this specialized neurological care,” Fritz said.
Vice President of Research Julius Fridriksson said the Brain Health Center and neuroscience hospital will be extensions of USC’s current Brain Health Network, serving as a “continuum of care”.
This project is part of the USC Next Master Plan, which maps out future projects over the next 10 years to meet the growing needs of USC’s students and staff as well as the greater community.
New Health Science Campus
The Health Science Campus, a $300 million endeavor, will have modern classrooms, research labs, medical simulation spaces and a cafe. The campus will also include outdoor courtyards.
Research is a key component of the new campus, Fridriksson said. He said there are two main types of medical research that will be the focus.
“One is wet labs, so molecular biology to basic neuroscience to immunology," Fridriksson said. "We also expect that we’re going to be doing a lot of computational research, so relying large data sets or using AI applications.”
Most of USC’s funding towards research is allotted to the health sciences, and the university itself receives a large amount of money when it comes to medical-related research, Fridriksson said.
Another goal of USC’s new Health Sciences Campus is to meet the needs of the state for medical facilities and personnel by providing residents with the best treatment possible.
Fritz said that USC is building the new campus because it has the tools to provide for the state.
“Part of our job as a university is to have that innovation and have that community lens and integration," Fritz said. “We have the skills at this university to do it, and so it looked like an opportunity for the state.”
The campus as a whole will provide medical students at USC with the very best training, Fritz said.
The Brain Health Center
USC’s upcoming Brain Health Center will be a state-of-the-art facility dedicated to neuroscience and is set to open in 2026.
“It’s going to combine cutting-edge research and marry that with top-tier clinical care to really make sure that patients have the most effective and innovative treatment out there," Fritz said.
Dr. Leonardo Bonilha, USC’s brain health director and senior associate dean of research, said the new outpatient center will house a clinical center and a neuroimaging center.
He said the goal of the center is to provide improved care for patients with different types of dementia, such as Alzheimer’s disease, as well as other less common neurological diseases that lead to dementia.
Fridriksson said the center will be home to cutting-edge equipment, specifically two powerful MRI scanners.
“We expect that in less than a year, that building, which is about 80,000 square feet, will be completely renovated with two new MRI scanners funded by the federal government: a 7 Tesla scanner and a 3 Tesla white board scanner.”
A tesla is a measurement used to measure magnetic energy.
The 7 Tesla scanner will be the first in the state, and the 3 Tesla scanner is one of very few in the state, Bonilha said.
Bonilha said these advanced pieces of equipment will enable the university to provide quicker and more efficient neurological care to patients.
“By and large, we reduce wait times from several months, almost to a year at times, to around four weeks," Bonilha said. “It’s a pretty significant improvement."
The Brain Health Center will serve as the hub for USC’s Brain Health Network, which has opened five clinics so far across the state of South Carolina. The network is a partnership with Prisma Health, HopeHealth and the Lexington Medical Center, Bonilha said .
These clinics are located in Columbia, Sumter, Winnsboro, Seneca and Darlington, according to the network's page on USC’s website.
Fridriksson says the network, center and hospital will all tie into each other.
“The main idea is that folks will be referred from the Brain Health Network clinics to the Brain Health Center in Columbia, and then the next part of that is the neurological hospital," Fridriksson said.
Neurological Hospital and Rehabilitation Center
The primary focus of the Neurological Hospital and Rehabilitation Center is meeting the need for more care, especially in the elderly population of South Carolina, Fritz said. It is set to open in 2027.
She said the elderly population is currently outpacing the normal population in growth by 2%. And since neurological diseases are more common in the elderly, increases in demands for care are expected in the future.
Columbia’s location will play a big part in the effectiveness of this new hospital as well, Fritz said.
“70% of the older population can get here in two hours," Fritz said. "Which is really different than some of the expertise they have up in Greenville or at the beach, because you’re not able to get everywhere in the state quite as quickly as Columbia.”
Fritz said USC students will be training in the hospital when it opens. Combined with innovation, medical students at USC will be prepared to meet demands for an increase in the medical workforce.
The hospital and rehabilitation center is a continuum of care to the Brain Health Center. Once patients are diagnosed in the new center, they will be taken to the hospital if surgery is needed, Fritz said.
Another goal of this project is to create new jobs in the lines of health care and research, while at the same time having significant economic impact on the state of South Carolina, Fritz said.
The new facility will be modeled after Shirley Ryan AbilityLab in Chicago. Shirley Ryan is the top rehab center in the country, according to Fritz.
Anticipation for the future
Fridriksson said he is excited to see how these new facilities will enhance the university's activities in both neuroscience and general health science.
Fridriksson also said he is curious about what USC can do in the future to help solve pressing neurological disorders, like Alzheimer’s disease.
Julia Thoppil, a fourth-year medical student at the School of Medicine, said she is looking forward to a more localized campus. She also emphasized the ability for future students to forge face-to-face relationships with physicians earlier on in their studies.
"With the campus being this close, it'll be easier for people to hop on to research projects and get that face-to-face time from their first day here."
Dr. Mayes DuBose, president of the South Carolina Medical Association (SCMA), said part of his job is to address a physician shortage in South Carolina. DuBose mainly works to make South Carolina "a more attractive place to practice."
As a graduate of the USC School of Medicine, he said the main mission of the school’s founding was to meet the demands for primary care.
Now, DuBose said he sees the upcoming Health Sciences Campus as a way to further this mission.
The new campus, DuBose believes, will make an already well-respected medical school more attractive to attend in the future.
“A lot of doctors just want to get into medical school. That’s the big hurdle. But then if you can get into one that’s a really good looking, well-respected one, that’s just even better."
Fridriksson has confidence this new campus will put the university and its students at the forefront of future health science discoveries.
“I look for us to be not just a consumer of knowledge. I want us to be the generators of that knowledge and those discoveries. That’s what really drives me.”