Construction Under Way on $30M Hospital in Berkeley Springsrn
By Christine Miller Ford, The State Journalrn
rnrnBERKELEY SPRINGS — The spectacular $10 million downtown courthouse won’t be Morgan County’s newest superstructure for long. Work has begun on a modern hospital and medical office building that patients are expected to occupy by 2012.rnrnThe $30 million complex on an 80-acre site just outside of town will replace War Memorial Hospital, which dates to the 1940s and employs more than 160 full- and part-time workers.rnrnValley Health, the Winchester, Va.,-based medical provider that had operated War Memorial for two decades, won the OK earlier this year to construct the new facility.rnrnThe West Virginia Health Care Cost Review Authority gave the go-ahead after listening to objections from West Virginia University Hospitals-East during an October hearing on the matter.rnrnThe hospitals new, 85,000-square-foot facility on Fairview Drive will be about 1.5 miles from the current hospital. It will have 41 beds, the same as in the existing hospital, but Valley Health officials say the new hospital will include a host of upgrades – from the latest technologies and an expanded emergency room to improved accessibility for disabled residents and room for outpatient care, a health department and a senior center.rnrnBased about 45 minutes from Berkeley Springs, Valley Health is a non-profit health system with 5,000 employees and nearly 500 physicians.rnrnIts largest facility is Winchester Medical Center, and it operates three hospitals in Virginia, plus Hampshire Memorial Hospital in Romney.rnrnHoward Shockey & Sons Inc. of Winchester is the company handling construction. It’s the same company responsible for the new hospital in Romney that got under way last year.
http://www.statejournal.com/story.cfm?func=viewstory&storyid=84396