By Stephen Smoot
The days of area residents needing to take lengthy trips for specialized medical treatments is passing. In the Potomac Highlands. WVU Medicine’s Grant Memorial Hospital in Petersburg and Potomac Valley Hospital in Keyser have both taken giant steps forward in expanding offerings to the region.
PVH President and Chief Executive Officer Mark Boucot shared recently how the current round of service expansion started. He explained that “What we did when I first got here was that we did a robust survey of the community.” The objective lay in gathering data to inform decisions. Data came from community forums, but also from Medicare and Medicaid billings to the area. Both combined to provide a comprehensive picture of “what they weren’t getting here” but had to travel elsewhere to receive. Areas of known need matched many areas where WVU Medicine could offer economically viable expanded areas of service. That helped to draw a roadmap of how to proceed with the focus on, as Mr. Boucot stated, “serving people close to their home.”
Work proceeded soon after on finding ways to reduce emergency room waiting times with demand for services rising for the foreseeable future. WVU Medicine shared in a January release that over 10,000 visited the PVH emergency department annually. That rose to less than 20,000 by the end of 2025 with an expected jump to 25,000 annually in four years, a near 120 percent increase in demand that “underscores the community’s increasing reliance on Potomac Valley Hospital for emergency care.
Boucot credits part of that as “word of mouth got out that our services are really expanding.”
PVH addressed the coming emergency room access crunch with a two-fold response. Three years ago, the facility opened a Rapid Care clinic, commonly called by the copyrighted term “urgent care.” As the January release noted, “the purpose of the Rapid Care Center is to divert non-urgent volume from the Emergency Department.” Both facilities host a combined 43,000 visits annually, approximately four times the number visiting the emergency room alone eight years ago.
Rapid Care visits also come at a much lower cost to the patient than the emergency room, since it covers minor illnesses or injuries. Patients also experience shorter waiting times by using Rapid Care. Should a patient have a problem too serious for Rapid Care, they will be referred to a PVH department that can help.
This year, PVH received a $7.2 million infusion from WVU Medicine to expand the emergency department. Treatment rooms will expand from eight to 12 with four “fast track” bays. The emergency department will also add “a new patient and family consultation room, supporting efficient and compassionate care delivery.”
An additional $1 million will go to upgrades in the operating rooms at PVH, adding an additional OR and another laparoscopy room, as well as “a modernized environment for safe, high quality, emergency care.”
Four years ago, PVH expanded into oncology and saw immediate benefits. Keyser High School coach Scott Furey, as the Mineral Daily News Tribune reported, served as the first patient to “ring the bell,” the ritual marking the close of cancer treatments. He originally had to travel to Oakland, Maryland for the same services from WVU Medicine.
He told the Mineral Daily News Tribune that “as far as my experiences at Keyser, it couldn’t have been any better.” Furey shared that “people may have apprehensions about staying local, because they have the idea that local isn’t good enough. As for the cancer center at Potomac Valley, they are more than good enough, they are great.” He cited the compassion and concern of staff at PVH as an important aspect of his care.
Oncology services appeared at about the same time as PVH opened a Center for Medical Sciences and Workforce Training. A United States Department of Commerce grant paid for much of the project. Officials estimated at the time that the center would create up to 265 jobs and help 370 retain their positions with an expected $203 million in additional private investment related to it over 10 years.
Boucot stated that “when the Verso plant (paper mill in Luke, Maryland) closed” that inspired the move. In a release, he said “at PVH we recognized what the loss of 700 jobs . . . would do to the community.” Plans emerged to construct a center that “will give people in this community an opportunity to receive education and training in professions that will allow them to find gainful employment where they live.”
West Virginia has an aging population with part of that coming from retirees looking for a better financial condition and finding it in the Mountain State. That brings with it specific care needs for conditions common among older people.
Last fall, PVH added to its slate of services advanced technology in orthopedic surgery. Surgeons use the latest imaging technology to develop patient-specific plans of attack. With more accurate data, surgeons can guide robotic surgical devices to perform the procedure more accurately with fewer issues and a shorter recovery time.
These are just a few examples of a number of key services added in recent years. These have helped PVH evolve from a community hospital into a regional health care facility capable of meeting major needs at home and still connected with the full suite of potential services available within a few hours at WVU Medicine facilities in Morgantown, Bridgeport, or Martinsburg.
Without the people, however, the technology means nothing. The latest physician to join the PVH staff will be Dr. Brittany Streets, a highly respected local physician with years of service to the community.
