CHARLESTON, W.Va. — In the mid-to-late 1960s Charleston General Hospital and Charleston Memorial Hospital were having a similar problem, their medical staffs were getting older and it was becoming increasingly difficult to recruit doctors to the Capital City.
That mutual need was the genesis of discussions that eventually resulted in the two hospitals becoming one and forming Charleston Area Medical Center, commonly known today as CAMC, on Jan. 1, 1972. The system began its 50th year of existence Saturday.
Mutual needs
CAMC Chief Operating Officer Dr. Glenn Crotty is the resident expert on those early days, having first come to CAMC in 1974 as a third-year student in the WVU School of Medicine. He recently told MetroNews that by 1968 both hospitals, which had grown by combining with a few smaller hospitals in and around Charleston, were keenly aware of their needs for more doctors.
“The average age of physicians was 55 and rising. Their physician ranks were shrinking. Too few doctors were coming into Charleston to replace those who had retired or moved away,” Crotty said.
The hospitals turned to WVU and the Appalachian Regional Commission with a vision to create a pipeline of doctors by allowing some medical school students to train in Charleston and complete their residencies there.
“Most residents will stay in an area that they train in, at least over half will do that. So they were developing the manpower of the future,” Crotty said.
There was a sticking point, according to Crotty, WVU didn’t want to have a program for two different Charleston hospitals, thus the forming of CAMC. Merger talks that had begun a few years earlier but failed for various reasons now had the momentum necessary.
Crotty gives a lot of credit to former Charleston Memorial Hospital obstetrician Dr. Jack Chambers for bringing everyone together.
“He was the president of medical staff at Memorial and he was able to persuade key leaders of both medical staffs and wards to create the opportunity for young doctors to train here that that manpower would develop and redeploy for future manpower needs in the community,” Crotty said.
Pipeline produces
Chambers’ prediction has come true with hundreds of doctors training and staying in Charleston in the last 50 years including Crotty who was in the first class of third-year medical school students to come to Charleston in 1974.
“The pipeline was the absolute key (to the forming of CAMC) and it was the main goal,” Crotty said.
In the early years there were 20 students a medical school class that would come to Charleston after initial training in Morgantown, that’s now grown to 40 a class and many have stayed.
“Even today, over half of our medical staff has been a student at this division,” Crotty said.
Many hospital systems across the country have come and gone since 1972 but CAMC has had staying power. Crotty said that’s because Charleston General and Charleston Memorial hospitals agreed to become one hospital in one system not two separate hospitals under one umbrella.
“It was one hospital, one medical staff, one administration, so it could operate effectively and efficiently,” he said.
COVID challenge
Now CAMC faces another challenge and maybe it’s biggest one yet with the ongoing COVID pandemic.
“In my close to 40 years being here this is the absolute biggest challenge we’ve faced,” Crotty said.
This challenge is also in the area of staffing, but unlike the late 1960s, the new challenge is mostly in the nursing field which has been hit hard by the pandemic.
“We have to get more students interested in nursing school,” Crotty said.
He said Gov. Jim Justice’s $48 million allocation in CARES Act funds to train, retain and recruit nurses is a good start.
“It’s the beginning not the end all of what we have to do to redevelop our nursing manpower,” Crotty said.
Crotty said CAMC has only been able to make it through the pandemic because of its workers which he said have been the key to the system’s now 50-year existence.
“They are the rock and true heart and soul of CAMC,” he said. “I absolutely thank them for all of the hard work they have done and will continue to do during this next challenge. I can’t say enough about our hospital staff and their response to the challenge that we face ahead.”
CAMC also includes Women and Childrens’ Hospital in Charleston which CAMC acquired in 1986 and Teays Valley Hospital, formerly Putnam General Hospital, which was purchased in 2006.