Published: October 25, 2007 10:35 pm      

White Hall Pharmacy ‘perfect fit’ for HealthPlex

Plans second location at new FGH facility

FAIRMONT — White Hall Pharmacy will be adding a second location at the Fairmont General Hospital HealthPlex when the medical fitness facility opens in about a year.

“It just seems like we’re the perfect fit,” said pharmacy owner Terri Vilain about expanding her services into a center designed at providing well-rounded, holistic health care. “The synergy is amazing.”

Currently under construction, the $13 million HealthPlex will feature a high-end fitness center, diagnostic services and physicians’ offices in addition to the expanded pharmacy.

White Hall Pharmacy’s current location on Middletown Road, about a mile down the road from the site where the HealthPlex is being built near Fairfield Inn off exit 132 of Interstate 79, already has a separate room for patient counseling, and Vilain plans to expand those types of services at the new site.

“We’re going to have a pharmacist that’s certified in diabetic and hypertension counseling, and we’ll have a registered nurse on staff and a registered dietitian on staff,” Vilain said. “All of that revolves around the counseling and collaboration aspect of the wellness center. It’s cutting-edge medical therapy management.”

Albert Pilkington III, CEO of FGH, said construction on the HealthPlex, due to be completed in October 2008, is two or three weeks behind schedule, but he hopes to make that up and still have the facility open in a year.

“Should the weather this fall be as mild as it was last year, we anticipate being up to catch up to the schedule,” Pilkington said.

Originally, Rider Pharmacy was supposed to place a second Fairmont location in the facility but backed out in the summer, citing costs being quoted by the hospital. Also, Dr. Beth Santmyire-Rosenberger was going to move her practice, Appalachian Spring Dermatology, to the HealthPlex, but also had to change her mind for the same reasons.

About 3,000 square feet of the 55,000-square-foot facility remains for what could be two physicians’ offices, Pilkington said. Drs. Lisa Flower and Judy Bonfili will be moving their general physicians’ practice into the complex.

“We are in no real hurry to recruit physicians for the remaining office space, as we have several options we are considering,” Pilkington said.

In the past, Pilkington has described the fitness center as a high-end gym that will offer services such as fresh towels in addition to helping an older demographic work out in order to prevent or combat illnesses such as diabetes.

This week, he also said hospital officials have been in discussions with a national coffee vendor “for a very small coffee and smoothie shop,” he said.

White Hall Pharmacy opened in May 2006 and in a year and a half, sales have exceeded the three-year plan created for the business, Vilain said.

Vilain already was in talks with hospital officials about creating other services when Rider Pharmacy backed out, she said.

“We’re both interested in the community and the different things we can do, and it just fell into place after Rider Pharmacy backed out,” Vilain said.

The cost constraints that caused Rider Pharmacy to reconsider did not have the same effect on White Hall Pharmacy, Vilain said, because she already had been looking to expand not only space wise, but service wise.

In fact, she said, the new White Hall Pharmacy location will be taking up twice the space that Rider had planned on using.

The facility will feature drive-through service as well as the expanded counseling for customers, Vilain said.

Even though the two pharmacy locations will be close together, Vilain does not expect that to cause any overlap. The existing location will be called White Hall Pharmacy Middletown Road and the new one will be White Hall Pharmacy HealthPlex.

“We’re concerned that people are going to get the wrong idea that we are closing and moving up there,” Vilain said. “I just want to re-emphasize that this is a second facility. This is an expansion, and we’ll be able to offer new services to patients that we can’t offer here.”

E-mail Mary Wade Burnside at mwburnside@timeswv.com.