

Image by Alan Olson
Pretty much all readily available area at the Marshall County Overall health Office is utilised for some goal, whether or not it is housing data or changing specialised rooms into place of work space.

MOUNDSVILLE — Marshall County Wellness Department was cutting edge and impressive … when it was constructed in 1955, claims administrator Tom Prepare dinner.
In the decades since, the rooms have begun to pile up with an at any time-raising sum of paper documents, alongside with odds and finishes that are applied often more than enough to want but too sometimes to grow to be long lasting fixtures. With the need for extra area to spread out at an all-time top quality, Cook hopes the county’s current obtain of the up coming-door developing which once hosted the Moundsville Journal will enable them the home to grow, renovate, and boost their services to now only the place they want to be, but the place they’ll have place to thrive.
The present facility, Cook dinner reported, holds various, specialized rooms, such as an office environment after applied by a dentist, whose chair however stays and is applied for medical purposes, and a darkroom to establish X-rays, which was converted into a conventional office space.
Extra than just about anything else, Cook dinner mentioned, the department requirements a lot more storage place.
“Space. A lot of space,” Cook stated, when asked what he experienced the optimum hopes for with the new developing. “We have materials in three various locations — we have a storage unit, we’re retaining some of our things at a fire department, and all the things … in this article, too.
“… It is heading to let us get far more individuals in listed here, extra men and women for assistance, use this space as a conference area, foods handler’s class, lectures, things like that,” he included. “I can get 15 people crammed in right here (now). … You can not put a lot of men and women in in this article properly.”
Through the division, bins that contains health-related data stretching back again to the 1950s occupy many flat surfaces not in any other case utilised, and even some that are. Vicki Allender, a self-described “old nurse” who came out of retirement to assist the section operate via the COVID-19 pandemic, reported the division would be significantly helped by possessing more room for nurses to work in, both for realistic needs and for privacy issues.
“I would like more room, a more blended area for our clinical team,” Allender explained. “We’re kind of spread everywhere. I would like a standard, nursing workplace for the nurses to be in. This is these kinds of close quarters in listed here. We truly have to be worried about individual confidentiality. It is as well small.”
The medical space, Prepare dinner stated, consisted of the foyer at the entrance of the health section, which he would like to see divided up, yet again for functional and confidentiality applications.
“A thing I want to see in the new one is a separation when you come in the entrance door, 1 side goes into medical, and the other side goes to almost everything else,” Prepare dinner stated. “I do not want them crossing paths.”
In the department’s basement, a lot of freezers hold doses of vaccines, some proper upcoming to refrigerators applied to maintain food stuff. Any clinicians wanting to retrieve a dose of the vaccine have to go downstairs and locate it, which Cook explained wastes time, and which he would like to have place to make chilly storage quickly offered on the first flooring.
In spite of the old-college layout and compact utilization of room, the health and fitness department’s technological know-how is up-to-day and not hurting for infrastructure, aside from the creating they’re operating out of.
“We upgraded the pcs, so we’re very excellent here,” he stated. “The internal workings, we substitute them as they arrive. We’re not guiding on that.”
Cook dinner reported the building’s roof has witnessed fires and the inside experienced severe drinking water damage from broken pipes, and that he estimates the facility is further than renovation. The Marshall County Commission beforehand stated that renovations, remodeling, and demolition to rebuild the web site had been “all on the desk.”
The workers, which includes two volunteers, are what genuinely retain the wellbeing office managing easily, Cook reported. Two of the department’s volunteers, Becky Yoho and Mary Niehaus, perform numerous times a 7 days to enable with get hold of tracing and vaccine administration.
“We couldn’t do it without the need of our volunteers,” Cook dinner reported. “I have two in here correct now, serving to with make contact with tracing, vaccinations. Nobody’s been sitting down down or not functioning all around. Which is a constant point. Which is a ordinary day listed here, and consider that there are clinics on top rated of that.”







