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WHEELING -- A new partnership in 2021 will see Wheeling Hospital providing care through the West Virginia University Health System.
WVUHS announced in September that Wheeling Hospital would be joining its network of health care facilities in West Virginia, Southwestern Pennsylvania, Western Maryland and Ohio. Wheeling Hospital will become WVU Medicine Wheeling Hospital and be branded as part of the WVU Medicine family of hospitals and clinics. WVU Medicine has overseen financial management at the struggling hospital since June 2019, when Douglass E. Harrison was named as Wheeling Hospital's chief executive officer.
The agreement states the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston, owner of Wheeling Hospital, will enter into a 50-year long-term lease of the hospital to WVUHS.
Wheeling Hospital is to maintain its Catholic identity as it becomes a full member of WVUHS.
The Diocese and WVUHS expect the hospital to join WVUHS as a full member in March 2021, subject to all applicable board and governmental approvals, according to a statement released by WVUHS.
Harrison wore gold and blue — and a mask adorned with the WVU logo — when he announced in July the hospital had lost $30 million over the past two years. Wheeling Hospital was seeking voluntary lay-offs, and was in need of a financial partner to shore up its financial future, he said.
It appeared then that WVU Medicine was being lobbied as a potential investor in the hospital.
But any financial partnership likely wasn't to happen until Wheeling Hospital settled the terms of a legal settlement expected to cost the hospital $50 million.
The Department of Justice had filed a lawsuit against the hospital in March 2019. It accused the hospital of allegedly paying kickbacks to doctors since 2007, and giving them incentive payments based on how much patient business they referred back to the hospital.
It was announced Sept. 9 that Wheeling Hospital had satisfied the terms of the $50 million federal settlement.
The partnership between WVU and Wheeling Hospital next came on Sept. 11.
The WVU Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute, WVU Medicine Children's, and WVU Emergency Medicine already operated programs at Wheeling Hospital at the time of the announcement.
WVUHS announced at the time of the agreement it also would be bringing a WVU Heart and Vascular Institute clinic to Wheeling Hospital. Interventional cardiologist Christopher Allen, a member of the WVU Heart and Vascular Institute, was named chief of cardiology at Wheeling Hospital in October.
The West Virginia University Health System, is the largest health system in West Virginia.
Locally it operates Reynolds Memorial Hospital in Glen Dale and Wetzel County Hospital in New Martinsville, and provides management services to Barnesville Hospital and Harrison Community Hospital in Cadiz.