SGH welcomes Darrow to staff

Dr. Joseph Darrow, Jr.
In a continuing effort to improve care and to provide convenient services, Sistersville General Hospital is offering a monthly orthopedic clinic.
The services are being offered thanks to Camden-Clark Memorial Hospital in Parkersburg. Dr. Joseph Darrow Jr. is an orthopedic surgeon working with SGH to provide the services.
“Camden-Clark has decided to develop a rural outreach program,” explained Darrow. “Lisa Leach (CCMH Director of Business and Network Development) first brought me up here to meet with the administration and all the wonderful people up here.”
Prior to coming to CCMH, Darrow was in practice in Southeast Ohio for eight to 10 years. He went on active duty with the U.S. Air Force for two and a half years, serving in Afghanistan and Iraq, and spent another two years in Washington D.C., spending part of that time working with the National Navy Medical Center at Bethesda, MD, where he worked on casualties from Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom.
In a short amount of time, Darrow and SGH have put together a service that can diagnose muskuloskeletal trauma, sports injuries, and other conditions. Darrow’s expertise is vast.
“We have developed an orthopedic clinic here,” said Darrow. “We’re seeing all the people who come to Sistersville General Hospital. We offer a broad range of orthopedic services. I specialize in total joint replacement and I also did a hand fellowship at the Mayo Clinic. I’m very well trained in general orthopedic surgery as well as some sports medicine stuff, hand surgery and total joint replacement.”
Darrow won’t be able to conduct surgery at SGH. However, the clinic allows Tyler County residents to receive treatment that otherwise they’d have to drive to Parkersburg to get.
“All of our surgeries are being done at Camden-Clark, just because the challenges faced by rural American hospitals are such that it’s very hard for them to develop and maintain surgery capability in-house due to the great costs involved, especially when they’re devoting so much of their energy to providing quality care to the people who live in their service area,” stated Darrow.
“We try to save them the expense and the time of traveling to see a physician. Unfortunately, we still have to work those expenses in when they have to have surgery, but at least for diagnostic services, most of their follow-up we can do that right here in Sistersville, which is good for them.”
The clinic is open on a monthly basis on Friday mornings and is by appointment only. To make an appointment, call 304-865-5035.
Darrow is happy to be working closely with SGH. He applauded the hospital for its quality of care.
“I think that Sistersville General Hospital should be extremely highly commended,” exclaimed Darrow. “They’re filling a niche extremely financially untenable for them to exist in, and they’re doing a great job. They’re getting the best, up-to-date technology for the people in this area. And they do it through a lot of hard work and very clever ingenuity in getting federal grants to provide healthcare to rural service areas.”
“The administrators of this hospital should be very highly commended for their intelligence and their hard work and all the great things they’re doing to bring quality medical care to the people who live here, rather than just saying it’s too hard, closing up shop and moving down the line,” added Darrow.
For more information on the services offered by Sistersville General Hospital, call 304-652-2611.