T-L Photo/JOSIE BURKHART WVU Medicine Wheeling Hospital President and CEO Douglass Harrison and WVU Medicine Heart and Vascular Institute Executive Chair Vinay Badhwar, MD, FACS, FACC cut the ribbon for the opening of the the new Heart & Vascular Institute clinic at Wheeling Hospital. Shown from left are: Courtney Watson, HVI PA-C; Ashley Haught, PA-C; Erik Sevcik, HVI APRN; Brenna Young, HVI PA-C; and Brandi Howell, PA-C Brittney Hibbitts, Ambulatory Office Supervisor; Dani Simmons, LPN; Vanay Badhwar, MD, Executive Chair WVU Heart & Vascular Institute and Professor and Chair of the WVU Department of Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery; Doug Harrison, president and CEO of Wheeling Hospital; Ganga Prabhakar, MD, Associate Professor, Surgical Director of Cardiac Surgery at Wheeling Hospital; Cortney Stack, coordinator Ambulatory Clinic; Brittany Derrow, medical assistant; Ashley Ludwick, HVI Northern Regional administrator; Frank Briggs, vice president, WVU HVI; Ashley Jackson, associate vice president, WVU HVI; Jenae Lipperman, HVI Ambulatory Services manager; George Sokos, MD, professor and interim chair, WVU Department of Cardiology; and Ryan Stackhouse, HVI, director of Cardiovascular Services.

WHEELING — An expansion of service happened at WVU Medicine Wheeling Hospital with the opening of the new WVU Heart & Vascular Institute clinic.

The hospital hosted a ribbon cutting Friday morning for its new HVI Clinical Suite on floor three of Tower One. Among the people cutting the ribbon were Wheeling Hospital President and CEO Douglass Harrison and WVU Heart and Vascular Institute Executive Chair Vinay Badhwar, MD, FACS, FACC.

Harrison said this is an expansion of service and consolidation of practices in the community.

“The team was a bit fragmented before,” he said. “They had a location up at The Highlands, and this allows them to come down and have a more team-centered approach to healthcare.”

Surgeons and cardiologists will work together within the same building where they can share what’s going on with a patient and make sure the patient gets to the right level of care.

“I’ve been very proud of our heart and vascular institute,” he said. “Not only here at Wheeling but also across the system and across the state. This is a shining institute model, I think, for the county to look at and how we do patient-centered care for all disease states on the heart and vascular team.”

Patients can expect timely access to care and seeing a physician, nurse practitioner and physician assistants and have the team develop a care plan that works for them.

“We’re very proud of creating more access with this office and doubling the space,” he said. “And so now more people can be seen in a timely manner.”

Harrison said this is about bringing advanced level care to a local level.

Badhwar said a team has been built, all coming together for the care of a patient, including physicians, nurses and health providers in a very specific way of advanced care.

This new clinic sees cardiac, thoracic and vascular patients while joining the mission of cardiology, which represents what the WVU HVI is all about, Badhwar said.

He said the alignment and partnership through Wheeling Hospital and WVU Medicine has aligned together to bring this type of service to Wheeling.

“Today we’re opening this special clinic, which is an amalgamation with the assistance and close partnership with Wheeling Hospital,” he said, “to bring that all as one, not just on the patient facing perspective but also on the diagnostic perspective.”

Badhwar said sometimes when a patient goes to a doctor’s office they have to go across the street or somewhere else to get a special extra test, and the aim of this new clinic is to bring that to the hospital.

“Truthfully, how we care about patients is how we care about family,” Badhwar said. “That’s why we’re here. While we provide services that are known around the country and around the world, it’s all about that personal care. We take care of the individual. We want what we would want for our own family members, and that’s what this is about.”