T-L Photo/GAGE VOTA Board-certified physician in internal medicine-gastroenterology Daniel Shats plans to pave his own way by opening a private practice after East Ohio Regional Hospital recently closed its doors.

ST. CLAIRSVILLE — Daniel Shats, a board-certified physician in internal medicine-gastroenterology, isn’t letting East Ohio Regional Hospital’s recent closure stop him from serving the Ohio Valley.

Shats is originally from Ontario, Canada, but has been practicing in various places throughout the Ohio Valley since 2012. Most recently, he was operating out of East Ohio Regional Hospital in Martins Ferry, but he has now opened his own independent operation at 46898 National Road West in St Clairsville.

“I’m operating independently here and happy to do so because we’ve got a lot of people leaving the area, practitioners that have stopped working at East Ohio and a couple others in the gastrointestinal space,” he said. “Dr. (Sanjay) Chaudhary, who was down the road, retired and had asked me to take over his practice over there in the Riesbeck’s Plaza. And so now that that practice is closing, I’m over here and happy to do it.”

He added that before Chaudhary retired, he sold his practice to East Ohio Regional Hospital; the closure of EORH also led to his practice closing.

“It’s now closed because Dr. Chaudhry had sold his practice to EORH in 2022. He stayed on to work there, but he sold it to the hospital. And because of their financial troubles, when he decided to retire he called me and said, ‘Hey, I need somebody good to take over. Would you be interested in doing that?'” Shats said. “And it was good timing because I was transitioning out of working with another practice in St. Clairsville, so I was glad to start there. Unfortunately, financial troubles at the hospital meant that basic supplies were not getting replenished, people were not getting paid properly, and we were having a difficult time staying operational. Equipment and scopes were not getting repaired. So that didn’t work out. It didn’t last that long that I was there, but now we hope to get things going on a more permanent, more reliable basis.”

He added that he was only at EORH for roughly six months before everything started going wrong.

Shats then explained what his profession is and why he believes it was so crucial for him to open up at a new location as soon as possible

“Gastroenterology is the specialty that deals with the digestive system, so everything from the moment you swallow to the moment that it goes out in the bathroom, and everything in between,” he said. ” In addition, we’re liver specialists, and we also handle other organs like the pancreas, which is connected to the digestive system. So it’s a pretty broad range of diseases and conditions that we treat. We do endoscopy, the scoping tests. Things like colonoscopy and upper endoscopy, those are done either in a surgery center that’s an outpatient center. We have a couple over there in the Riesbeck’s Plaza or in the hospital, depending on the nature of the procedure and the nature of the patient.”

He added that he believes one of the most important things he does is the scoping for colon cancer screening.

“Unless you have a family history, starting at the age of 45 everyone needs to have their colonoscopy. And what we do there is a look for polyps, which are small growths inside of the colon. When we see them, we remove them. We cut them off, because all cancers in the colon start as a polyp,” he said.

“That’s one of the most useful things that we do. Colon cancer is one of the most prevalent cancers that there are, and through taking off polyps you prevent it from happening. So it’s one of the most useful screening tests, compared to other screening tests. Like when ladies get their mammography or Pap smear, you hope to catch the cancer early enough to treat it, but with a colonoscopy, you can prevent it from ever happening.”

Shats said that now that he’s open at a new location, he will be doing an aggressive letter campaign in hopes to connect with patients he had at EORH, and he hopes that the hospital will provide him with his patients’ records but isn’t optimistic about receiving them.

With Trinity Health System opening a new hospital in St. Clairsville this summer, Shats is hopeful that he will be able to work out an agreement with the hospital to perform some of the procedures that are needed to be done in a hospital there to save his patients from additional travel.

“I hope to, because some patients need to have their procedures performed in a hospital setting. That would be very convenient. If they will invest in getting the equipment, then I would be happy to perform the procedures over there,” Shats said regarding his plans to work with Trinity Health System’s new St. Clairsville hospital when it opens.