Growth in our area
There have been a lot of changes going on at the facility residents of the Tri-State Area have for decades known as Weirton Medical Center.
And, while among the most obvious has been the signage outside that now indicates the complex located at 601 Colliers Way has been renamed West Virginia University Medicine Weirton Medical Center, there’s a lot going on inside that will have a big impact on how area residents access health care.
That was one of the big takeaways from Monday’s event during which WMC was officially welcomed into the system.
“Good morning, everyone — those signs look good, don’t they,” said Albert Wright Jr., the president and CEO of WVU Health System while speaking to the members of the hospital staff and members of the community who had gathered in the atrium area.
“I’m a big sign guy. This kind of has a tailgate feel to it.”
Besides the signs, there are many other changes that will be coming during the next several months, as the 238-bed hospital becomes fully integrated into the WVU system.
One of the biggest, Wright explained, will be WVU’s Epic patient information system, which is scheduled to go online in Weirton on April 1.
“You’re going to have an invasion of about a thousand IT people to make sure that goes extremely well,” Wright said. “But that electronic medical record is really the lifeblood that connects all of our facilities. From urgent care to the clinic, to the small hospital to the bigger hospital to the home health care world, all of that information flows seamlessly, all of those labs, images and prescriptions, physical progress notes — so that all caregivers can see all of your information in real time.
“That allows us to be safer, so that when we hand off here from one site to another, one floor to another, there’s no mystery. It allows us to be more efficient.”
And it’s all designed to put the needs of the patient first.
“It allows us to be a coordinated caregiver, especially for our most complex patients, where we have to care manage them across sites and in their homes,” Wright added.
That investment is just one step of a process that will bring increased services to the Northern Panhandle.
“Those will come in time,” Wright said. “But, obviously, this first year is going to be centered a lot around infrastructure. Getting that electronic medical record system installed is a really big lift. That’s millions and millions of dollars. And then, as we start to bring in service growth, that could go in a number of directions, but it’s normally around what we call our signature programs — investments in heart and vascular care, investments in the neurosciences.”
There’s room to expand and grow, Wright feels.
“I think we’ve got a big opportunity for cancer treatment here. Right now, we do hematology, medical oncology here. I’d like to do radiation oncology here someday. That’s a capital investment that’s high on Albert Wright’s plan. We’ll see if other people are excited about that. And then pediatrics and children’s care and trauma — those are the things that we will have some active conversations about during the next couple of years.”
All of those expanded services will be good for the residents of the Tri-State Area.
“We want this facility to be as comprehensive as it possibly can be, and that’s our model,” Wright added.
WVU Medicine is a $7 billion academic health system, but what separates it from others is that it does not have an urban core — it covers a rural area. That’s why expansion to all corners of West Virginia is important.
“For us to meet our two-part mission of improving the health trajectory of the state and supporting the teaching mission of West Virginia University we have to make our spoke sites, the Weirtons of the world, strong if we are going to meet those missions,” Wright explained.
“Weirton will fit right into that pattern,” he added.
That ties in with a goal of being able to provide services that will allow more patients to be treated in their hometown.
“We don’t have a spine surgeon here. We don’t have radiation oncology here. Those are things I think we could do here that would keep patients from having to go to Pittsburgh or Morgantown.
“You’ve got to, as an organization, commit to saying we are going to try to build those services here and not fly them to the academic medical center.
“It’s better for the patients, too,” he added. “If you live in this community, if we can recruit a WVU-capable spine surgeon, whether it be orthopedic or neurosurgical, who’s willing to live in this community and do a great job, it’s better for the patients to do that here. That’s going to be our approach.”
It’s a commitment that bodes well for the Tri-State Area.
“Weirton is such a great community and this hospital has such a great history that this is, in my humble opinion, a match made in heaven,” Wright said.
(Gallabrese, a resident of Steubenville, is executive editor of the Herald-Star and The Weirton Daily Times)