A Legacy of Healing, Growth, & Community Support

In 1999, a small community hospital in Ironton, OH was on the brink of bankruptcy and in danger of closing forever. As the Ironton community depended heavily on that hospital for employment and emergency medical care, two caring, family practice physicians from nearby Huntington, WV, reached out to see if they might be able to help keep the hospital open by staffing and operating its emergency room.

Though that hospital would eventually shut down, Robert A. Hess, MD, and Stephen C. Shy, DO, saw an opportunity to help other struggling community hospitals by creating a small physician staffing and management company called Ohio Valley Physicians.

Over the next 25 years, Ohio Valley Physicians grew to provide state-of-the-art emergency department and hospitalist staffing and management services for six community and regional hospitals across Ohio and Virginia. As much of that growth was occurring outside of the Ohio River Valley, company leaders changed the company name to OVP HEALTH in 2019.

In response to the devastating opioid epidemic that was ravaging much of Appalachia, Dr. Hess and Dr. Shy began offering high-quality medication-assisted treatment and counseling services, which along with routine primary care services, are now provided at 22 OVP HEALTH outpatient centers across five states. OVP HEALTH owns and operates a 91-bed, inpatient recovery center in South Point, OH.

Thanks to the leadership of Dr. Hess and the late Dr. Shy, OVP HEALTH, with corporate offices in Huntington, WV, has grown to become an employer of nearly 500 people throughout Ohio, Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia, and South Carolina.