MedCenter Health, chain based at Bowling Green hospital, to expand medical specialty offices at new building in Glasgow

The ceremonial groundbreaking
(Photo by Michael Crimmins, Glasgow News 1)

Kentucky Health News

The small hospital chain based in Bowling Green, MedCenter Health, is expanding its medical-specialty offerings in its largest close neighbor, Glasgow.

MCH has had a presence in Glasgow for “a number of years,” but will now have a building of its own and start providing specialty medical care, Wade Stone, executive vice president of MCH, said Thursday at the groundbreaking for the facility on South L. Rogers Wells Boulevard.

Stone said the facility will allow MCH to continue combating the nationwide physician shortage, especially with regard to specialty services, spurred by the chain's partnership with the University of Kentucky College of Medicine, reports Jack Dobbs of the Bowling Green Daily News.

“As Med Center Health has evolved into an academic teaching institution we’ve been able to successfully recruit many of those specialties and grow those programs,” Stone said. “We can deploy those specialists to other rural communities.”

MCH Glasgow, which is expected to open in about a year, will also "allow patients to complete pre-op and post-op procedures locally, instead of having to commute to Bowling Green," Dobbs notes.

One of the specialists will be Paul Moore, who has been cardiothoracic surgeon in Bowling Green for 30 years, Dobbs reports: "He said he has been treating patients in Barren and surrounding counties for the past six or seven years, but described MCH Glasgow as a central location."

Dobbs told Glasgow News 1, “We have a number of patients that come from here, not just from Barren County but Adair County, Clinton County, Monroe County; this seems to be a central location they can all get to easily. I’m at the point now where I want to get out and see the patients who really need access and the care I can give that’s not given locally and that’s really important.”

Other specialties listed in a press release were Vascular Surgery, ear/nose/throat, hematology/oncology, neurosurgery, urology and orthopaedics/sports medicine. Stone said three or four full-time primary-care physicians will also practice at MCH Glasgow, which will have 22,000 square fete of floor space,

Glasgow's hospital is the locally owned T.J. Samson Community Hospital, which has a branch in Columbia. MedCenter Health, which grew out of the publicly owned Bowling Green-Warren County Hospital, has hospitals in Albany, Franklin, Horse Cave and Scottsville.