Charleston Area Medical Center is the name of a complex of hospitals in Charleston, West Virginia, formed via a merger of previously independent facilities. It is the state's largest hospital. Charleston Area Medical Center is the primary medical facility for the city of Charleston. There is a combined total of 838 staffed beds between three facilities. In 2008, there were 98,103 emergency department visits, 3,131 births, 33,132 ambulatory surgeries, 557,867 outpatient visits, along with 35,294 inpatient discharges, 26,597 general operating room procedures, 1,687 open-heart bypass procedures and 8,294 procedures performed in cardiac cath labs. CAMC consists of four locations: Memorial Hospital, General Hospital, Women and Children's Hospital and Teays Valley Hospital. The largest branch is the CAMC Memorial Hospital, located in the Kanawha City neighborhood. It primarily hosts cardiac, oncology, and internal medicine cases. The second largest is CAMC General Hospital, located downtown, which focuses on neurology, orthopedics, trauma, and rehabilitation care. The third is Women and Children's Hospital, which is located on the banks of the Elk River. CAMC's fourth campus is the CAMC-Teays Valley Hospital, located in Putnam County to the west of Charleston, and serves that suburban area. CAMC is a tertiary, teaching institution with numerous educational affiliations, the most significant of which is an affiliation arrangement with West Virginia University, in which CAMC hospitals are training sites for WVU medical students and WVU faculty supervise CAMC residents and fellows. CAMC is the home of the Marshall UniversityDoctor of Management Practice Nurse anesthetist program. CAMC provides the most uncompensated care in the state of West Virginia, with a total benefit to the community over $115 million per year.
History
During 2005 and 2006, the facility won awards for being one of the top 50 hospitals for cardiology and cardiac surgery on the US NewsList of "Best Hospitals."
The HealthGrades website contains the latest quality data for Charleston Area Medical Center, as of 2015. For this rating section three different types of data from HealthGrades are presented: quality ratings for thirty-two inpatient conditions and procedures, thirteen patient safety indicators, percentage of patients giving the hospital a 9 or 10. For inpatient conditions and procedures, there are three possible ratings: worse than expected, as expected, better than expected. For this hospital the data for this category is:
Worse than expected - 2
As expected - 17
Better than expected - 13
For patient safety indicators, there are the same three possible ratings. For this hospital safety indicators were rated as:
Worse than expected - 3
As expected -9
Better than expected - 1
Data for patients giving this hospital a 9 or 10 are:
Patients rating this hospital as a 9 or 10 - 69%
Patients rating hospitals as a 9 or 10 nationally - 69%