FAIRMONT, W.Va. — Fairmont Regional Medical Center celebrated more than 100 years of providing health care in Marion County and North Central West Virginia last week.
Grant Smith, Director of Community Relations for FRMC, said the hospital officially recognizes it’s birth date in 1914, but also wanted to honor 75 years at their Locust Avenue location.
“We felt that it was important, not only to celebrate that history, but to recognize the legacy and the cultural impact that this facility has had not only in Fairmont and in Marion County but to North Central West Virginia at-large,” he said on Tuesday’s edition of “The Mike Queen Show” on the AJR News Network.
“There’s not to many degrees of separation between the citizens of Marion County, the citizens of North Central West Virginia, and FRMC. You can have somebody that is 70 years old or somebody that is 20 years old driving down Locust Avenue and look up at our facility and say, ‘Yeah, I was born there. I was born up there.'”
Fairmont Regional Medical Center–formerly Fairmont General Hospital–unveiled a History Wall Display in recognition of that history on December 13.
“FRMC has been a staple in the community for well over 100 years,” Smith said. “It’s so woven into the fabric of the community. It’s almost kind of hard to imagine the area without it.”
The original hospital was founded by Dr. John R. Cook, who began his career as a doctor for the Montana and New England Mines. That hospital was located on Gaston Avenue. It would eventually move to Locust Avenue in 1939.
“The original mission of Cook Hospital is still applicable to what FRMC is doing, and that is to be a community-oriented, patient-centric first hospital,” Smith said.
Smith said in later years the hospital has focused on building partnerships with important neighbors in academia.
“It’s really incredible to think about the academic impact that this facility also had to the medical community,” he said. “All of which now has kind of been incorporated now in one way or another with our neighbors–Fairmont State and Pierpont Technical College. But a lot of those medical programs themselves started with FRMC.”
“We want to put all the tools in place to make sure the nursing program at Fairmont State continues to excel, continues to grow.”
In 2014, Alecto Healthcare, LLC acquired the hospital and renamed the facility Fairmont Regional Medical Center.