COLUMBIA - Advocates for the aging say the state has handled a dramatic rise in its nursing home population and appears headed in the right direction with more home and community care.

The state had roughly 16,000 people 65 and older in nursing homes in 1990, but that number jumped to more than 19,000 by 2000 according to a Census report on America's elderly released last week. The nearly 19 percent increase was the highest recorded in the country.

By contrast, the number of people in nursing homes across the United States during that decade decreased by 2.1 percent.

The increase for South Carolina can be attributed to an aging population boom as well as people living longer and needing more long-term care. There also were simply more nursing home beds created.

"The General Assembly authorized 1,500 more nursing home beds" in the late 1980s, said Randy Lee of the South Carolina Health Care Association. "Many of those beds did not come on line until the 1990s. That would account for the number of people coming in, plus some facilities have been built that were totally private-paid."

The state Health and Human Services Department has seen fewer people on Medicaid in nursing homes beds in recent years. There were 14,670 people in taxpayer-funded beds last summer compared with 17,521 in 2002.

That could be attributed to the community long-term care program, which has a waiting list of more than 3,400 people, agency spokesman Jeff Stensland said. Some may be foregoing nursing homes for home-based care, and the agency hasn't added nursing home beds since 1999, Stensland said.

Of the 200 licensed nursing home facilities in the state, about 150 have contracts with Medicaid.

While it's not clear whether the number in nursing home beds since 2000 has increased, there is definite demand for home and community-based care.

Advocates such as the Health Care Association and the AARP, as well as the state agency, support the program.

The AARP has made it a top priority this legislative session to get more funding, and Health and Human Services has requested an additional $1.2 million, which could trim the waiting list by about 500 people.

"We've been advocating that this year in order to avoid people going into nursing homes," AARP's state legislative director Teresa Arnold said. "We think that if we had more home- and community-based services funded in this state that would prevent much more costly expenditures down the road."