Payments to doctors in South Carolina

Drug and device companies reported paying $200,751,084 to 27,051 doctors and practitioners with a South Carolina practice address between 2019 and 2025 — 1.2% of the national total, and 26th of 51 states.

What was reported

$200.8 million
General payments: $200,751,084; Made outside a research agreement.; 1,765,285
Payments: Separate general payments. CMS’s record lists the kind of each.; $8.0 million
Research payments: $7,985,551; Funding for studies, usually paid to an institution with a doctor named on it. Shown apart from general payments and never added to them.; 27,051
Doctors and practitioners: People CMS holds at least one reported payment for with a South Carolina address. Not a count of doctors in South Carolina, which neither source publishes — so nothing here is divided by it.; 1.2%
Share of the national total: Of $17.3 billion in general payments reported nationally.

Drug and device makers paid South Carolina’s clinicians $2,315 each in 2025, against $2,813 across the country

General payments reported to CMS for clinicians in South Carolina, divided by the clinicians they were reported for, by program year, against the same across the country.

The clinicians counted are the ones paid, not every clinician practising, so this is what a paid clinician received on average, not what a clinician did.

2025 is published and still being revised, so its last point may move.

A clinician is counted in the state CMS lists for them that year, so one who moved is counted where they were paid.

Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services — Open Payments — payments grouped by physician

The figures behind this chart

Drug and device makers paid South Carolina’s clinicians $2,315 each in 2025, against $2,813 across the country. General payments reported to CMS for clinicians in South Carolina, divided by the clinicians they were reported for, by program year, against the same across the country.
Program year	South Carolina	United States
2025	$2,315	$2,813
2024	$1,949	$2,756
2023	$1,972	$2,670
2022	$1,906	$3,119
2021	$1,695	$2,924
2020	$2,025	$3,357
2019	$2,559	$3,853

4 more columns on a wider screen

The 10 largest recipients of general payments in South Carolina, 2019–2025
Rank	Doctor	City	Specialty	General payments
1	William Smith	Columbia	Orthopaedic Surgery	$7,687,401
2	Colin Edgerton	Summerville	Rheumatology	$3,501,795
3	Neal Shore	Myrtle Beach	Urology	$3,176,001
4	Steven Poletti	Mt Pleasant	Orthopaedic Surgery of the Spine	$2,982,320
5	Donald Johnson	Mt Pleasant	Orthopaedic Surgery of the Spine	$2,946,148
6	Gregory Niemer	Summerville	Rheumatology	$2,868,309
7	Gary Fink	Summerville	Rheumatology	$2,857,826
8	Clarence Legerton	Summerville	Rheumatology	$2,850,265
9	Jennifer Murphy	Summerville	Rheumatology	$2,816,070
10	Marshall Shuler	Greenville	Dermatology	$2,601,679

Ranked within South Carolina, by general payments only. Research funding and ownership interests are separate transactions with separate meanings and are not added in — a doctor paid only for research is not on this list. Every doctor in the record lists the rest.

What South Carolina’s doctors prescribed under Medicare

A second CMS file records what doctors prescribed rather than what they were paid. In 2024, 22,190 prescribers with a South Carolina address filled 30,252,422 Medicare Part D prescriptions costing $5,229,547,998 — 1.8% of the $288.4 billion Medicare paid nationally. None of that money went to the doctors. It is what Medicare, its plans and patients paid pharmacies for what they wrote.

30,252,422
Prescriptions filled: Claims, counting every refill. 2024 only, not the period above.; $5.2 billion
What the drugs cost: $5,229,547,998; Paid to pharmacies by Medicare, its plans and patients. Not income for any doctor.; 1.8%
Share of the national drug cost: Of $288.4 billion Medicare paid nationally in 2024.; 22,190
Prescribers: People CMS published a Part D row for. CMS drops a prescriber-drug row under eleven claims, so a doctor who prescribed little of everything is not here — and this is not a count of doctors in South Carolina.; 1,199,885
Opioid prescriptions: Of 59,133,014 nationally. CMS withheld the opioid count from 350,416 prescribers, so this is a floor rather than a total.

The state is the practice address CMS holds for the prescriber, not where the patient lives or the pharmacy stands. Unlike the payment figures above, every Part D claim is attributed to a state, so these rows do add up to the national total — the gap described further down this page is an Open Payments gap and not this one. Prescribers ranked by claims, by what their prescriptions cost and by opioid claims are national lists.

South Carolina elsewhere on the Factbook

Reported crimeCrime and justice
Offenses reported to police by type, the trend, and the reporting coverage.
Most dangerous cities in South CarolinaCrime and justice
What each agency serving 25,000 or more reported, ranked. Agency populations overlap, so these do not add up to the state.
Prison populationCrime and justice
People held under the state’s correctional authority, and the imprisonment rate. A different publisher counting a different thing.
Arrests by race, sex and ageCrime and justice
Arrests as the FBI’s participating agencies reported them, with what the figures can and cannot support at the top.
Hate crimeCrime and justice
Incidents reported to the FBI by bias motivation, as counts — the collection publishes no participation share, so there is no rate to compare states on.
Federal obligationsFederal spending
What federal agencies obligated against a place of performance in the state, per resident and by agency.
Registered nonprofitsNonprofits
How many organizations the IRS lists in the state, what they report as revenue, and which kinds of work they do.
Farm program paymentsFarm subsidies
What the Farm Service Agency paid through the state’s county offices, by program and by recipient. The offices that administered the payments, not a count of farms: a recipient addressed elsewhere is counted where they were paid.
Paycheck Protection Program loansPPP loans
The PPP loans SBA guaranteed to businesses operating in the state, by county, with how many carry a forgiveness amount and how many were charged off. Loans, not businesses: a business with two draws is two loans.
The South Carolina Factbook entryAcross the Factbook
Every measure the Factbook publishes for this state in one place, each with where it ranks among the others and the record it came from.

The immigration hub has no page for this state: EOIR runs no immigration court here, and CBP publishes by sector and field office, which are its own areas of responsibility rather than a geography. Immigration and the border.

What this page does not show

Where the work happened. The state is the practice address CMS holds for the doctor, not the place the payment was earned or the patient was seen.
Doctors CMS holds no state for. 435 of 1,693,971 profiles carry no state, holding $3,697,188 in general payments. They are in the national total and on no state page, which is why the 51 state pages do not sum to it.
Anything about influence. The record says what was paid and by whom, and this page makes no claim beyond that.

Data retrieved September 25, 2026

Sources

Open Payments — payments grouped by physician — Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services · U.S. Government work · retrieved September 25, 2026
Medicare Part D Prescribers — by provider · U.S. Government work · retrieved September 22, 2026