By Austin Johnson For The Tribune

BURLINGTON — OVP Health, based in Huntington, West Virginia, opened a drug and alcohol abuse treatment center In Burlington on Thursday with a ribbon cutting ceremony.

The renovated facility will consist of 62 beds with 23 impatient beds for men, 23 inpatient beds for women and 16 acute detox beds for patients experiencing severe withdrawal symptoms or complications from substance abuse.

“Our region has suffered for a long time from a severe shortage of inpatient beds for people needing intensive treatment for substance abuse disorder,” Robert A. Hess, MD, president and co-founder of OVP Health, said. “The OVP Health Recovery Center will enable us to place these patients in a safe, secure environment, and to stabilize them, medically.”

Patients may be admitted to the OVP Health Center by self-referral, but also by referral from local law enforcement agencies, local court systems, hospital emergency and social work departments, primary care providers and other agencies that provide substance abuse or health care services.

Treatment at the OVP Health Recovery Center will be administered by an experienced team of physicians, nurse practitioners, nurses and counselors. 

Michelle Webb, Inpatient Behavioral Services, said, when you start looking at Lawrence County and the Tri-State area, what you see is an increased number of heroin overdoses, and substance abuse in general.

“Our goal is to stabilize and treat the individual suffering from that and help them get back to become more productive in society,” she said.

Webb said OVP Health Recovery will absolutely be a benefit to Lawrence County.

Kathy Swinford, who worked at Our Lady of Bellefonte Hospital for 27 years in the emergency department, said since Bellefonte closed, it’s put a damper on medical treatment for drug and alcohol rehabilitation.

“This will be a good upcoming adventure for OVP and Lawrence County, it’s definitely needed,” Swinford said. “We are very excited to open this new place and get it going.”

According to Swinford, 12 individuals from OLBH are employed at OVP Health.

OVP Health started in 1999 as a two-family company. In 1999, Robert A. Hess and Stephen Shy, formed an emergency department staffing company based in Huntington, West Virginia, called Ohio Valley Physicians. Two decades later, Ohio Valley Physicians is now a multi-faceted, family/physician-owned and operated company called OVP Health.

COVID-19 has really put a lot of patients with addiction further behind on their recovery Jonathan Hess, Medical Director of OVP said.

“The OVP facility will act as a starting point and a journey that we will be walking through with our patients,” Hess said. “It will not only affect their lives, but the greatest part is that it’s going to affect their children’s lives and generations to come after them.”