Hospital expansion takes step forward

WHEELING - The $50 million expansion project at Wheeling Hospital took a major step forward as about 200 hospital staff, supporters, donors, political leaders and officials gathered in a tent in the parking lot Thursday afternoon for the ceremony to start construction of Tower 5.

The seven-story tower will include a new emergency room that will be a major expansion over the current space, as well as pediatrics and obstetrics, new office spaces and room for future expansion.

The expansion has been a desire of Bishop Michael J. Bransfield of the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston, since he became bishop five years ago, hospital officials said.

Prior to offering a blessing, Bransfield said the hospital is "to me a vital part of the community here."

"It's a wonderful day in Wheeling to be building this kind of a building for our people," Bransfield said.

The tower will be connected to the main building. The new emergency room will be more than 25,000-square feet and will enable the treatment of as many as 50,000 patients a year.

Ronald L. Violi, chief executive officer, said, the new tower will make up for a shortage in office space to house doctors in medical subspecialities the hospital wants to attract.

He said the new pediatrics area, which consolidates facilities from throughout the hospital in addition to making space for additional services, will be especially important to families. The hospital recently announced a partnership with Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh to provide additional services at the Center for Pediatrics.

"We will be able to bring you things you had to leave here to get in the past," Violi said.

In addition, he said, the new patient rooms on Tower 5's third floor will be private rooms, leading to a change across the hospital to make about 90 percent of patient rooms private in coming years.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., who was participating in the daylong health care summit in Washington Thursday, sent a statement saying the groundbreaking is "an expression of the confidence that Wheeling Hospital has in the Northern Panhandle."

U.S. Rep. Alan Mollohan, D-Fairmont, sent congratulations. "In Washington, we seem to talk about health care ... in Wheeling, you actually are making real progress," he wrote.

Dr. Angelo Georges, the hospital's chief of medicine, recalled joining the hospital nearly 22 years ago and having watched the beginnings of the hospital as it was built in the mid-1970s. Georges said it's important as the nation is inundated with statistics about health care to remember that people are not just "hospital beds."

He said the hospital is about people from the staff right through to the patients and has a higher mission, especially as an essentially Catholic hospital.

"Without these people (the staff), those doors don't fling open," Georges said.

Mayor Andy McKenzie noted he, his wife and their three sons were all born at Wheeling Hospital. He called Tower 5 "an investment in the quality of life" in the Wheeling area, as well as a place of growing employment and an increased tax base.

Gov. Joe Manchin III was unable to attend because of the weather but also sent a statement.

"Wheeling Hospital has maintained a high level of care for the Northern Panhandle region, and you continue to expand services and raise your level of quality," he said.

The new tower also will have larger spaces for the intensive care and cardiovascular intensive care units in addition to the patient rooms, emergency department and the Center for Pediatrics. Two floors will be unoccupied and available for future expansion.

The hospital was given clearance by the West Virginia Health Care Authority in September for the project. Construction is expected to take nearly two years and create about 250 construction jobs. About 50 permanent new hospital jobs will result.

Bransfield brought Violi, a former administrator at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh, to Wheeling Hospital in 2006 to revamp the hospital, which had lost about $7 million a year for the previous seven years. He and his consulting partner, Vince Deluzio, were credited by Bransfield and other hospital officials with engineering Wheeling Hospital's turnaround within six months of their arrival, and it's been profitable since.

The hospital was founded in March of 1850 by Bishop Whelan of the Catholic Diocese of Wheeling.

Monsignor Kevin Quirk, chairman of the hospital board of trustees, recounted the founding of the hospital at 14th and Eoff streets 160 years ago.

"This corner of the 200-acre campus is as fraught with as much promise and hope as the hospital was on the original site," he said. "Bishop Whelan would be proud to think of what his little hospital has become."

(Giannamore can be contacted at pgiannamore@heraldstaronline.com.)