Trinity Health System Neighborhood Hospital Director of Operations Jamie Betts believes the hospital bridges the gap between three area hospitals closing in the past 15 years.

ST. CLAIRSVILLE — Trinity Health System Neighborhood Hospital Director of Operations Jamie Betts believes that the recently opened hospital will fill the void in health care in the Ohio Valley.

Before his position, Betts was a paramedic for Cumberland Trail Fire District.

“I started in EMS in 2011 and since that time, OVMC, East Ohio Regional Hospital and Belmont Community Hospital have all three closed in the local area here,” Betts said. “We’ve lost three hospitals in the last 15 years, and we haven’t gained any, so this is the first one that we’ve gained in the area since.”

Betts graduated Barnesville High School in 2011 and has since worked in healthcare.

After graduation he went to Belmont College for a paramedic education and has a bachelor’s in health science from Southern New Hampshire. Betts also has a Masters Degree in Health Administration from Oklahoma State as well as a degree in nursing education from Wheeling University.

“I really enjoy taking care of people. I’m a people person. I could never work from home – I need to interact with people,” Betts said. “Being able to take care of them on their worst day is very important to me. Being able to be a calming voice, and in addition to that, being able to help others perform that as well is very important,” Betts said.

“I was doing post secondary education while in high school, and then shortly after, started paramedic education. I got an Associate’s Degree in Paramedicine and started working as a paramedic. First, I worked about five years as a local paramedic and firefighter here in the area and then left there to go fly as a flight paramedic full-time with stat medevac which is out of Pittsburgh and part of UPMC.”

Betts is the Director of Operations of the Neighborhood Hospital which means he is the person who bridges the gap between the staff at the hospital and the leaders that are not on site.

“I’m the only leader that’s on site every day. So I start my day and end my day here,” he said. “We share a lot of services with our other campus in Steubenville – with Trinity West andTrinity East – so a lot of the leadership for the facility is shared amongst that facility.

“So, for example, the director of radiology oversees the radiology staff here. However, that individual is not here every day and I’m the one that’s here every day interacting with the staff — all the way from nursing staff to radiology, respiratory, EVs [Environmental services] and maintenance.”

He added that the hospital is a full service 24/7 emergency department where patients show up here no matter what’s wrong.

“Obviously we have physicians, we have nurses, we have all the staff that we need to take care of emergencies. Just sometimes we wouldn’t be able to admit them here if they require a high level of care, so if they need an ICU admission — we don’t have an ICU here — we would send them out.”

He said that he’s optimistic about the future of the Neighborhood Hospital, adding that St. Clairsville has never had a hospital before but has needed one for a long time.

“I think we’re in a very good position with the property we have here to expand,” Betts said.

“There’s plenty of room as well as there’s plenty of opportunity for expansion, not just physically, but with the services we provide, so whether that be adding on additional services, specialty services, things like that, I think we’re in a good climate to do that.”

In addition to expansion, Betts said that the hospital has been able to implement A.I. to save time.

“A lot of times you hear AI demonized, but I think truly we see that advances in technology throughout history have always helped healthcare. I truly don’t see AI taking over healthcare – there’s a lot of humanistic nature to it. However, I think it’s very helpful – to utilize AI for simple things, like physicians being able to use them for their dictation,” Betts said.

He added that AI technology will allow those providers to see more patients, because they won’t have to take 15% of their time to document what they’re doing because it will automatically be documented and the providers will be able to just review it.