Published: September 24, 2008 09:56 pm         

Moving ahead

Southern W.Va. will benefit from added medical initiatives

Raleigh General Hospital has formally filed its Certificate of Need application with the West Virginia Health Care Authority to expand cardiac care services that will allow them to provide full catheterization procedures for southern West Virginians in Beckley.

Coupled with the recent announcement that Beckley-Appalachian Regional Hospital is being considered by the state to host a 150-bed psychiatric hospital, it is good news for us all.

Beckley is blessed to have two excellent community hospitals, along with the Veterans Administration facility.

In recent years, progress in expanding and improving health care service and access has been at the forefront of the agendas of those administrating the operations at our hospitals and the work is continuing to show.

Those who will benefit are West Virginians in need of medical attention.

It has been suggested by David Sudbeck, state ombudsman for behavioral health, that the Mountain State’s overcrowding problem at its two existing acute care mental health hospitals can be resolved by situating a new unit at ARH.

ARH officials have submitted a letter of intent with the Department of Health and Human Resources to construct the proposed $70 million psychiatric facility on land ARH owns and is situated across the street from the current acute care hospital.

Mental health services have become a solid, established offering at the local ARH facility for more than three decades and choosing Beckley would be a win-win for everyone involved.

At RGH, the opportunity to bring highly sought after interventional cardiologists to our area to offer a complete line of catheterization services, including angioplasty, is quite simply a quality of care issue. It provides the public a chance to reduce long trips to places like Charleston and Roanoke for heart treatments; some times it will mean the difference between life and death.

For way too long RGH has been sending cardiac patients down the road for medical services they couldn’t offer. Not any more.

We fully expect Charleston Area Medical Center and its surrounding hotels, motels and restaurants to protest this plan because they will no longer benefit economically from traveling families and friends of those patients.

It’s long past the day for us to begin keeping loved ones as close to home as possible when it comes to medical treatment. We’ve got the facilities, the hospitals have the desire and staff, good jobs will be generated, it’s our time.

Things are about to change — more specifically, lives are going to be improved and saved in our own backyard.