Dr. Robert Hess serves as president and co-founder of OVP Health, a Huntington-based provider of inpatient and outpatient healthcare services, and an employer of nearly 500 people across West Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, Virginia and South Carolina.
A graduate of Marshall University Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine in 1984, he then completed his internship and residency in family medicine at Riverside Methodist Hospital, in Columbus, Ohio.
After residency, Hess joined Huntington Internal Medicine Group (HIMG), where in 1992, he became its president. It was also at HIMG that he met Stephen C. Shy, DO, with whom he would partner in 1999 to form a new company called Ohio Valley Physicians, providing emergency department staffing and management services for a struggling hospital in Ironton.
Over the next 24 years, Ohio Valley Physicians grew to provide emergency and hospitalist services for six regional hospitals; primary care and medication-assisted treatment and counseling services at 22 outpatient centers across five states; and inpatient treatment services for people with substance use disorders at a 91-bed facility in Lawrence County, Ohio. As much of that growth was outside the Ohio Valley, the company’s name was changed to OVP Health in 2019.
The company aims to treat everyone with dignity and compassion through its health care and outreach efforts. Though Shy died in 2020, Hess continues to lead OVP Health with its core values of “family, community, quality and integrity.”
