Expansion is essential for Mountain Health and Huntington

Earlier this year, the Marshall University Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine and Marshall Health, partnered with Logan Regional Medical Center and others to launch the nation’s first separately accredited rural general surgery residency program. The new five-year program will welcome its first trainees in July. Several Marshall Health specialties, including general surgery and cardiology, have practiced in the Logan area for years.

“Partnerships like this one are how we continue to build the skilled physician workforce West Virginia needs while meeting the health care needs of our communities today,” said Beth L. Hammers, CEO of Marshall Health. “Rural training programs are one way we know that we can help meet physician shortages happening in so many rural areas. Marshall Health looks forward to working alongside Mountain Health, LRMC and local physicians to bring more specialty care options to patients in southern West Virginia.”

The expansion makes sense in a business climate where consolidations are the trend and smaller, stand-alone operations face tremendous competitive pressures. A benefit to the greater Huntington area is forging a new connection with the Logan area. Since the completion of four-lane Corridor G to Charleston in the 1980s, Logan area residents have had easier access to the Charleston area than to Huntington. This new health care partnership will help re-establish the former connection between Huntington and Logan.

Meanwhile, other pressures mount. The same day Mountain Health announced its new cooperative venture with Logan Regional Medical Center, WVU Medicine Wheeling Hospital said it plans to no longer accept patients within the West Virginia Public Employees Insurance Agency for inpatient care as of July 1.

“PEIA’s practice of underpaying West Virginia hospitals and not covering their actual costs has had an especially hard impact on Wheeling Hospital, which has lost $56 million over the past three years,” a WVU Medicine spokesperson said in an emailed statement to the Intelligencer of Wheeling. “While we had outlined our concerns to PEIA on this topic several months ago, no changes have been made.”

The Wheeling hospital’s decision could spark debate in the Legislature as it begins its regular 60-day session this week. It could affect the take-home pay of state employees and others who rely on PEIA, but it also could have a domino effect on other health care providers in the state.

Taken together, the two developments Friday indicate West Virginia’s health care system continues to evolve in many ways. The Mountain Health announcement should be good for consumers. As for the Wheeling matter, that’s in the hands of legislators.