By Jack Houvouras
HQ 34 | WINTER 1999
If you’re looking for some good news with regards to the local economy, take a short drive around town and count up how many health-related offices and buildings line the streets. Visit the city’s hospitals and examine the huge expansion projects. Progress is everywhere. In fact, the health care field has exploded and surpassed all other economic sectors in Huntington in terms of phenomenal growth in the 1990s.
Of course the driving force behind such unprecedented success is the region’s two major hospitals and the Marshall University School of Medicine. St. Mary’s Hospital, for example, boasts 2,000 full-time and part-time employees, controls a $100 million a year budget and has an annual payroll of $60 million. The hospital, which last year opened a $17 million outpatient complex, is the largest single medical facility in the state.
Across town at Cabell Huntington Hospital, the numbers are equally impressive. Cabell employs 1,600 people, brings in $160 million in gross revenues and has an annual payroll of $65 million. Last year, in conjunction with the MU School of Medicine, the hospital opened a $32 million medical center. The state-of-the-art complex is perhaps the most under-appreciated project to open in Huntington in recent years. Why? Because the endeavor’s success has given the med school a sense of permanence and because the facility will help recruit some of the nation’s finest physicians.
Behind this tremendous growth of health care are three very capable administrators: St. Mary’s CEO Thomas Jones, Cabell CEO Don Smith and med school dean Dr. Charles McKown. The cooperation between these three has been a catalyst for progress.
An example of that cooperation is the recently formed Genesis project, a joint venture that will see St. Mary’s and Cabell affiliated with Pleasant Valley Hospital in Point Pleasant. This partnership will make Genesis the second largest hospital corporation in West Virginia.
Perhaps leaders in the business community should take note of the rapid ascent of health care in Huntington. The sense of cooperation that exists in that field is, indeed, worth emulating.
