Founded in 1999, OVP HEALTH has grown to provide care to patients across five states. But its founders say Huntington will always be home.
By Katherine Pyles
HQ 115 | AUTUMN 2021
The downtown corner of Eighth Street and Third Avenue buzzes with energy. There’s The Market, of course — an eclectic marketplace with dining and shopping to suit every taste. But above the waffle cones and coffee, past the pizza and wings and torched Greek cheese, is the headquarters of OVP HEALTH, a space buzzing with an energy all its own.
Over the past few years, the bright green and blue logo for OVP HEALTH has popped up on buildings throughout the Tri-State. The health care provider has locations across West Virginia, Ohio and Kentucky, as well as in Virginia and South Carolina. OVP HEALTH, which was founded in 1999 as an ER staffing service for rural hospitals, has emerged as a regional leader providing physician staffing, hospital management, primary care and addiction medicine.
The decision to set up corporate headquarters in downtown Huntington came easy, said OVP President Robert Hess, MD. Dr. Hess co-founded OVP HEALTH, originally named Ohio Valley Physicians, with the late Steven Shy, DO. OVP remains a two-family business today, with several members of the Hess and Shy families serving in leadership roles.
“Huntington is home,” Dr. Hess said. “It’s where I’ve lived nearly all my life. It’s where my late partner Dr. Shy grew up. It’s our roots.”
It just so happened that OVP’s growth as a company coincided with the renaissance of downtown Huntington. When office space became available above The Market, Dr. Hess said he and Dr. Shy jumped at the opportunity.
“We saw what was happening downtown, and we wanted to be a part of it,” he said. “We wanted to reinvest in our city and be part of its growth.”
In addition to the 5,000-square-foot office space to the immediate west of The Market, OVP has expanded into a new 9,000-square-foot space to the immediate east of The Market, above Taste of Asia.
“We’re ‘cornering The Market,’” laughed Doug Sheils, chief marketing and communications officer.
Many of OVP’s employees are longtime Huntington residents, and Dr. Hess said providing local folks the opportunity to work in the heart of downtown is rewarding.
“The only downside is I lose half my staff in the afternoon to all the great restaurants,” he joked.
OVP’s investment in the community goes beyond office space, though; it includes involvement in Huntington’s greatest asset, Marshall University, as well as its greatest vulnerability, the opioid crisis.
In partnership with the Lewis College of Business at Marshall, OVP established an internship program in spring 2021 to promote diversity. The program provides paid internship opportunities for students of color at the Brad D. Smith Graduate School of Business, as well as mentorship opportunities for undergraduate students of color. Dr. Hess said he sought ways to make a difference in his own sphere of influence following the 2020 murder of George Floyd and the subsequent protests around the globe. Looking at the cultural and racial makeup of OVP, “we saw that we had some work to do to become the kind of diverse company we aspire to be,” Hess explained.
“It became clear to us that attracting employees from different backgrounds would require more from us than just having a non-discriminatory hiring policy,” he said. “It would require us to be proactive, and to reach out.”
The program is already a success: the first intern to complete the program, Umair Shariff, now works at OVP full time.
The program is a “win-win for all involved,” said Kent Willis, DrPH, assistant professor of health care management in the Lewis College of Business and Brad D. Smith Schools of Business. As program coordinator for the undergraduate health care management program and graduate health care administration program, Dr. Willis helps pair students with internship programs. He said programs that prioritize racial and cultural diversity offer far-reaching benefits.
“OVP’s approach to increasing diversity is not only giving students the opportunity to grow through experiential knowledge attainment but is also an asset to OVP’s business model,” he explained. “Diversity within an organization provides a larger talent pool from which to select employees and can potentially increase the skills of the other employees. Innovation and creativity can result from diversity, as well as increased productivity and improved business from a more diverse customer base.”
The partnership between OVP HEALTH and the College of Business supports a belief shared by most Huntingtonians: that Marshall University and Huntington are inextricably intertwined, and the success of one depends on the other. By the same token, many agree that if Huntington is to flourish and succeed, the entire community must address the opioid crisis ravaging the region. OVP is committed to both sides of that coin, said CEO Stacey Shy.
“Without question, addiction medicine is the most rewarding work we do,” said Shy, the son of co-founder Dr. Steven Shy. “When you see people who are truly devastated by addiction come into our programs and begin to do better — get their jobs back, get their families back, become productive members of the community — it reinforces that we’re in the right business, that this is the work we’re supposed to be doing.”
A longtime provider of outpatient treatment for opioid addiction, OVP HEALTH opened an 80-bed inpatient recovery center in 2020 in South Point, Ohio. New Medicaid guidelines allow West Virginia residents to enroll at the center despite living out of state, a process that OVP helped streamline. The women’s wing at the OVP HEALTH Recovery Center is named in memory of Taylor Leigh Wilson, of Barboursville, who died from an overdose at the age of 21 after waiting 41 days for a treatment bed to become available in West Virginia, before the Medicaid guidelines were changed.
“For us, it’s a mission,” Dr. Hess said. “We want to do anything we can to stem the opioid crisis and help people live longer and better lives in this area.”
While the bulk of OVP’s work remains in staffing emergency departments and providing management services to area hospitals, OVP continues to expand in the areas of addiction medicine and primary care. Future plans include a partnership with Marshall Health to provide dental care and other outpatient medical care for uninsured and underinsured patients.
“It’s been a terrific journey,” Shy said. “I never thought in 2006 I’d be sitting here about to have an article in the Huntington Quarterly. I think all the time about how fortunate I am to be a part of what OVP is doing and to be able to make a difference in the community. That’s what it’s all about. I want every community we’re in to be able to say, ‘We are better off because OVP HEALTH is here.’”
