HURRICANE, W.Va. –Bringing accessible healthcare to Putnam County continues to be the goal for CAMC Teays Valley Hospital as they plan to expand the facility to allow more services and opportunities for existing and future patients.

David Ramsey (CAMC Website)

A groundbreaking celebration was held at the hospital Thursday morning, where hospital officials and community leaders turned dirt at the site for the new building.

President and CEO of Vandelia Health David Ramsey said that the expansion will help them continue meeting the goal of bringing care to patients.

“Bringing care to people closer to home has always been the goal and we’ve managed to do that,” he said. “Over the years we’ve built ICU beds some years ago here so people in need of critical care could stay here and not be shipped out someplace.”

The announcement comes almost two years after they added an outpatient center in July 2023.

Vice President and Administrator for the hospital Randy Hodges says that the expansion means a lot to them as a company, but it means more for the patients.

“But to this community, we have grown to the point where we’ve run out of space in the current hospital,” he said.

Hodges said that the building will be about 50,000 square feet once it’s completed and will be right behind the main hospital. On the first floor of the building there will be additional operating rooms, additional endoscopy rooms, a vascular lab, 20 beds that will help them process patients on the day that they come in for surgery/operation and a central sterile lab

He says this will allow them to reach more people in the community.

Randy Hodges (CAMC Website)

“That’s going to allow us to expand the number of patients that we can take care of everyday,” Hodges said. “It’s also going to allow us to add additional procedures that we do at the hospital, so people don’t have to travel to other counties to get those procedures.”

The hospital, which was named Putnam General Hospital before CAMC/Vandelia Health bought it in 2006, has seen exponential growth.

Ramsey says it’s been amazing to witness the growth the hospital has been through since 2006 when it was scheduled to be shut down.

“Now seeing where were going to expand it and have already expanded services with here with the multi-specialist clinic, the cancer center and now the hospital expansion, it just does my heart good,” he said.

Hodges says that the planning has been about two years in the making, and it was a group effort.

“There were several different drawings that we went through,” he said. “We tried to get ideas from our staff, from the community, so we made some changes as we went through the process.”

One the second floor of the building they will be adding a nursing unit which will consist of 20 private rooms for patients.

CAMC Teays Valley expansion photo

Hodges also said that since the building will be expanding past the parking spots they currently have with an addition of 120 parking spots.

“Very nice flow for our patients that choose to come to Teays Valley Hospital,” he said.

He said that with the new parking spots, patients will have easier access to the new facility, so they can be dropped off at the door and receive the care, surgery or operation on the same floor.

Hodges said that construction of the building should begin soon, and they are aiming for a completion date of December 2026.