KANAWHA CITY, W.Va. — A predominate medical laboratory testing corporation is continuing to expand its services in the Mountain State.
Labcorp cut a ribbon on its 18th patient service center in West Virginia Thursday. They also held an open house of the new facility.
The new facility is now open along MacCorkle Avenue in Kanawha City, and dignitaries across the Charleston community came out to show their support.
Charleston Small Business Liaison Audrey Conn took part in the ribbon-cutting ceremony on behalf of Mayor Amy Shuler Goodwin.
Conn said that Labcorp encompasses so much of the area’s lab testing services and it’s crucial they continue to expand those services in the community.
“With the state-of-the-art facilities you really are on the cutting-edge of medical technology, especially here in Charleston, so I know I probably speak for a lot of folks that if you’ve ever had a test done around here your results have probably come from Labcorp, so really a staple business here in Charleston, obviously, and we cannot thank you enough and wish you the best of luck,” Conn said.
Kanawha County Commissioner Natalie Tennant was also on hand. She said the expansion of Labcorp says a lot about their credibility.
“There is this great relationship, there’s a trust among the patients and among the residents of the area to continue to be a part of Labcorp’s growth,” Tennant said.
The Charleston Area Alliance and the Chamber of Commerce also took part in Thursday’s ribbon-cutting event.
Labcorp’s patient service center’s serve all 55 counties and provide access to a wide range of lab testing services, including blood work and specimen collection.
Vice President and General Manager for Labcorp’s Ohio, West Virginia, and Western Pennsylvania district Todd Homan said they are proud to continue their expansion of providing convenient and accessible lab testing services to West Virginia communities as it represents a crucial aspect of healthcare overall.
“You know, we see it as very important to make sure that we have access to care, because it has been published that about 70-percent of healthcare decisions are based on laboratory testing,” Homan said. “So, for patients to have convenient, easy, affordable access to laboratory testing for healthcare, we’re proud to be a part of that.”
Homan said expansion across West Virginia has been a top focus of theirs, particularly within this past year. 
He said they opened a patient service center in the Greenbrier Valley area about a month ago and they plan to open up a logistics center in Fairmont in a couple of months from now.
In addition, Homan said they continue to focus on updating and modernizing a major laboratory of theirs’s in Charleston on a consistent basis.
“We invested heavily in equipment and capital for that laboratory this year to make sure that it remains a state-of-the-art laboratory,” he said.
Homan said they opened that laboratory in the Patrick Street area of Charleston about 20 years ago and it services about 10 states. He added that it’s one of the largest labs in the country that focuses solely on women’s healthcare testing.
This newest Labcorp testing facility is located at 4922 MacCorkle Avenue in Kanawha City.
Homan said this is an ideal location for them and the kind of services they offer.
“We make sure that it’s convenient for patients, you know, being on a major street is convenient for patients, having easy parking, very important for us, for bus services, that’s important as well,” he said. “We have other PSCs throughout the state, but this one here is a great location as far as being very easy to get to.”
Homan said there are over 2,000 Labcorp patient service centers throughout the country, all of them are interconnected.