IMPROVEMENTS COMING — Albert Wright, WVU Medicine president and CEO, speaks during the groundbreaking of the Robert Sonneborn Family WVU Medicine Children’s Outpatient Center in Wheeling on Tuesday. -- Derek Redd

WHEELING — More than 43,000 Ohio Valley children were seen by a WVU Medicine health care provider last year, said WVU Medicine Children’s Hospital Chief Administrative Officer Amy Bush. And that number isn’t getting smaller anytime soon, as 1,172 babies were born in the region last year.

So WVU Medicine has made it their mission to provide comfort and quality of care to the valley’s children, a mission reinforced Tuesday morning when WVU Medicine officials and partners broke ground on the Robert Sonneborn Family WVU Medicine Children’s Outpatient Center.

The 17,000-square-foot facility, a $16 million investment, will be housed at the former Continuous Care Center on the campus of WVU Medicine Wheeling Hospital. Bush said Tuesday it will be a “one-stop shop” for pediatric care that will allow children and their parents to seek specialized care closer to home.

“Our system is built on keeping care local,” said WVU Medicine Northern Region President Douglass Harrison.

“I think making this investment for our pediatric population speaks volumes about our commitment to keeping care local.”

The center will feature pediatric imaging and lab areas that will allow children to stay in one building to have their scans and lab work done under the same roof. There will be health care providers under the center’s roof offering services in multiple sub-specialties, but there will also be the opportunity to access doctors at WVU Medicine Children’s in Morgantown through telehealth, so children can be seen in person and through video conferencing at the same time.

It will also house an after-hours clinic where parents can take their children after work to see pediatricians for their ailments. That, Harrison said, is something people in the valley are very excited for.

“Parents that work who otherwise would have to take time off of work and pull their kid out of school, now we’ll be able to offer after-hours care at the same location,” he said. “A lot of kids were going outside of WVU Medicine Urgent Care, but those aren’t tied to our electronic medical records. So now you can come to WVU Medicine, everything’s in that electronic medical record and, in any subsequent visits, our providers should be able to see exactly what’s going on with that child.”

The center will feature an Austin’s Playroom, made possible through the Mario Lemieux Foundation, that will give patients and their siblings a place to play and have fun while on their visits.

Work on the facility should begin soon and take about a year to complete.

Bush said none of this would have been possible without the dedication and generosity of the people of the Ohio Valley, who have helped raise millions of dollars to make the center a reality.

“Kids are our future,” Bush said. “And the people of the Ohio Valley are serious about that. They want our kids to be healthier and they want this to be a growing, thriving community. And the foundation of growing and thriving and education is health. This community believes in that and is here for us.”

WVU Medicine President and CEO Albert Wright said days like Tuesday are among his favorite parts of his job, being able to celebrate milestones in the growth of health care in West Virginia. The upcoming arrival of the Robert Sonneborn Family WVU Medicine Children’s Outpatient Center, he said, is one of those milestones.

“I’ve spent a lot of time in the last decade in the Northern Panhandle,” he said. “If you look at where health care is today compared to where it was a decade ago, I think we can all be very proud.”