Robert A. Hess, MD, is the co-founder and president of OVP HEALTH. He graduated from Marshall University Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine in 1984. He then completed an internship at Riverside Methodist Hospital, in Columbus, OH, in 1985, and a residency in Family Medicine at Riverside Methodist in 1987.
Dr. Hess later joined Huntington Internal Medicine Group, or HIMG, where, in 1992, he became president of the large physician practice. While president, HIMG acquired the practice of Dr. Stephen Shy, who then joined the HIMG Board of Directors. A few years later, a need arose for management of physician staffing at Lawrence County General Hospital, in Ironton, Ohio, where Dr. Hess and Dr. Shy saw an opportunity to create a physician staffing company called Ohio Valley Physicians.
Ohio Valley Physicians, now called OVP HEALTH, grew to become a company managing the emergency departments and hospitalist functions at several regional hospitals, including Holzer Medical Center facilities in Gallipolis, Jackson and Pomeroy, OH; Ohio Health O’Bleness Hospital, in Athens, OH; Southeastern Ohio Regional Medical Center, in Cambridge, OH; and Buchanan General Hospital in Grundy, Virginia. OVP HEALTH also grew to offer a very successful CARF-accredited addiction treatment program in more than two dozen locations across West Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio and South Carolina. And in the Fall of 2020, the company will open a new, 62-bed inpatient treatment facility in South Point, OH, for patients suffering from addiction.
Thanks to the leadership of Dr. Robert Hess, OVP HEALTH has grown to become an important and dynamic force in the healthcare landscape of the Tri-State area.
