“Oh geez, guys, I’m sorry. We tried. If you can get to us in Glen Dale, we are there now, and we can help you. If you have to, take an ambulance.”
That’s what Martha Connors, now working in the mental unit department at WVU Medicine Reynold Memorial Hospital, said when asked, “If you could, what would you say to the patients displaced when Hillcrest was suddenly closed about two-and-years ago.”
“What Alecto did was pull the rug out from under so many people who needed us on a daily basis,” Conners said. “They may like to think they gave people enough notice and that everything was going to be fine, but that couldn’t have been further from the truth. People died by what they did, and that’s on them. We really did the best we could.
“And I am still very angry about it. I am,” she said. “Anyone who was affected by what they did and how they did it feels the same way as I do. It didn’t have to be like that, the way they just shut everything down.”
Connors worked at Hillcrest Behavioral Health Center for more than a decade before the closures of the Ohio Valley Medical Center and East Ohio Regional Hospital in the Fall of 2019, and in Wheeling that meant more than 800 positions in five different buildings were eliminated, and every hospital bed in Center Wheeling was empty for the first time in more than a century.
That included the 50 beds inside Hillcrest.
“They gave us just a few days to get everyone placed, but that was only the people who needed to be hospitalized,” explained Connors. “They did nothing for the people who needed us when they needed us. A lot of our patients voluntarily came to us when they felt they didn’t want to be alone, and those are the people that miss us the most.
“I know we’ve lost some of them, and that’s really upsetting because maybe they would have gotten the help they needed. Maybe not, but maybe,” she said. “But yes, I’m still angry.”
“In my time at Hillcrest, I kept my family fed, I made some true friends, and some people have told me that I made a difference in their lives. That’s really a lot, and Alecto can never take that from me.”
Immediately, Connors created a Facebook page and named it, “Save Hillcrest/OVMC/EORH,” and that’s because she believed there was a path to clear for a new owner and a resurrection.
She also went on local radio to offer the newest information to her former co-workers who also were summarily dismissed from their healthcare careers no matter who they were and what they did. Alecto Healthcare had failed badly during a two-year freefall in which they lost more than $30 million at OVMC and EORH.
“Who knows what they lost and what they didn’t,” Connors said. “I guess there were signs that something was wrong like we didn’t have money anymore to buy our patients (at Hillcrest) snacks, but there wasn’t money for a lot of things so I don’t remember thinking something was that wrong. We just bought the snacks ourselves.
“Before (Alecto) bought us, I know everyone was happy about them coming in because that’s when we were told there were a lot of financial issues because of a lot of changes that were taking place in healthcare. It wasn’t good, I knew that back then,” she remembered. “The new ownership was supposed to save the day and all they did was make everything worse.”
Some employees were paid extra to clear the buildings, including the West Tower, Hillcrest, the Education and Administration Building, and the South Tower. Once filled, the unmarked trucks just drove away leaving behind only scraps of the broken and unusable.
“They asked us to pack our jobs and send them away,” Connors said. “But some of us did it because it was a way to make money before hitting the unemployment line and looking for jobs that weren’t there.”
EORH reopened in February 2021 following the purchase of the Martins Ferry hospital by Dr. John Johnson of the Columbus, Ohio area. Johnson was one of a few who expressed interest in the OVMC campus, but ultimately the City of Wheeling entered into a long-term land leasing agreement with WVU Health Systems so the provider can construct a new, 90,000-square-foot regional cancer center that will employ an estimated 150 healthcare workers.
“I think it’s great that the property will still be a place for people to go to heal and to survive,” Connors said. “I’d rather see those buildings come down than watch them crumble. It was going to crumble for sure, so demolition and a new future is definitely better than the alternative. I have had family and friends who have had to travel pretty far for their treatment, so a new cancer center is going to be great for people in the future.
“When you have cancer, you do not feel like driving to Cleveland,” she insisted. “It will be wonderful to see those people and their families not have to travel that far when they are fighting for their lives.”
As far as mental healthcare is concerned, Connors continues to hope for growth.
“There is a population in Ohio County who cannot reach us here in Marshall County when they need us the most. I know the bus runs and that’s great for some of the people, but that’s just not how mental health works,” she insisted. “And we all know mental health is an issue here and it’s been more in the forefront because Hillcrest was closed. Plus, people who are psychotic normally don’t ride buses. That’s just a fact that needs to be accepted.
“They’re doing great things at Wheeling Hospital, too, but it’s kind of hard to get there,” Connors added. “Hillcrest was in a great location because it was available to everyone, and that includes the homeless. We helped a lot of people who came to Wheeling for all of the homeless services, and they came to us, too. But right now, I don’t know if the people at the homeless shelter in Wheeling can get those folks to where they need to be. That means people are suffering, and that’s a horrible thing.”
