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The West Virginia Encyclopedia
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The West Virginia Encyclopedia
The 302-bed Camden Clark Medical Center in Parkersburg is an acute care facility that serves Wood County and the surrounding Mid-Ohio Valley region. Camden Clark offers specialty care in internal medicine, surgery, oncology, anesthesia, family practice, pediatrics, obstetrics and gynecology, emergency services, pathology, radiology, and radiation therapy. The hospital employs about 2,500 people.
The forerunner to Camden Clark was City Hospital, a 40-bed facility that opened in 1898 on Wells Avenue, now 13th Street. The hospital also operated a school of nursing. In 1920, City Hospital moved to the Camden mansion on Garfield Avenue, which had been home to the U.S. senator and industrialist, Johnson Newlon Camden (1828–1908) and his wife, Anne. After Anne’s death in 1918, the Camden heirs decided to honor her by donating the mansion to the city to use as a hospital. With a donation and a subsequent bequest from Dr. Andrew Clark, the city altered the mansion and added a wing for a new hospital. In recognition of the Camden and Clark gifts, the hospital was dedicated as Camden-Clark Memorial Hospital on April 16, 1920.
Since then, the hospital has added new facilities and programs. In 1973, a new kitchen and mechanical wing opened. Two years later, the completion of North Wing Tower added patient rooms as well as a radiology department, coronary care unit, emergency department, laboratory, and pharmacy. Subsequent additions created the surgery suite in 1979, the Camden-Clark Memorial Hospital Medical Office in 1992, the Outpatient Physical Therapy Building on Dudley Avenue in 1999, and the cardiac catheterization laboratory in 2000. Outreach services include diabetes education workshops, television forums, CPR and first aid classes, cancer seminars, and cardiac rehabilitation education.
In 2011, Camden-Clark merged with St. Joseph’s Hospital to become Camden Clark Medical Center, an affiliate of West Virginia University Medicine.
Although Camden Clark closed its nursing school in 1969, it still serves as a learning site for students majoring in medical fields from West Virginia University at Parkersburg and area technical schools.