Building Trust One Patient at a Time: Dr. James Solava Emphasizes Prevention, Wellness and Doctor-Patient Partnership

By Andrew Wilson

The first visit with a new doctor can be filled with numbers – blood pressure, temperature, A1C – and background – personal and family history – but at its core James Solava, D.O., believes it is about establishing trust. 

“The first visit is the beginning of what I’d like to consider a partnership between doctor and patient,” said Dr. Solava. “There’s quite a bit of data gathering in that first visit, but it’s also an opportunity to get to know one another and establish trust. A lot of times, it takes time to build that trust.”

Dr. Solava acknowledges that for many people the first visit is because they are sick or in pain, so, in those circumstances, the primary goal of that first visit is getting the patient well again. After that, he says the goal is on staying well, which can be a slightly different journey for each person.

“I’m a huge believer in preventative medicine,” he said. “In primary care, we’ve always been about wellness, so there will be some baseline tests done to set the stage for what our patients need to do to stay well.”

Dr. Solava first became interested in a career in medicine when he was in middle school. His mother was a nurse for a cardiothoracic surgery practice based at Mercy Hospital. 

“She got me involved at volunteering at Mercy Hospital,” he recalls. “I would transport patients and I got the opportunity to go into the operating room and observe surgeries. I think it was then that I realized medicine could be a challenging but rewarding career.”

While his mother deserves the first thanks, Dr. Solava also credits Dr. Ronald Pelligrini and his partners in the cardiothoracic practice with providing him the “behind the scenes” views that made him consider medicine in the first place. Of course, there were others, too.

“Looking back, there are boatloads of people who deserve my thanks for guiding me and recommending me at key moments in my career,” he said. 

With that early exposure to cardiothoracic surgery, one might think that a career as a surgeon might be the outcome, but Dr. Solava said he really became interested in becoming a primary care physician when he was doing his internal medicine residency after medical school.

“Your ideas of what you want to do in medicine before you get into medical school and after can change quite a bit,” he said. “The internal medicine residency is an opportunity to practice other specialties. For a while, I thought I was going to be a nephrologist, but, when I completed my residency, I received an offer to join an internal medicine practice and I accepted.”

As an internal medicine physician, he values the opportunity to build trust and relationships with his adult patients, but there’s one piece of advice he’d like to impart to all patients everywhere.

“Don’t wait until something is wrong to see your doctor. Prevention is a wiser way to go,” Dr. Solava said.

To that end, he says it’s important to know your blood pressure, your A1C, and to get regular cancer screenings, especially of the breast, prostate, and colon.

“With screenings, we seek to prevent bad things from happening five or ten years down the road. It’s easier to remove a small polyp in the colon than to have to remove a section of cancerous tissue in the colon,” he said. “That’s why I say that primary care has been doing wellness and prevention from the very beginning.”

A new beginning for Dr. Solava and other physicians will be the opening of WVU Medicine’s Southpointe location this fall. 

“It will be great to have most of the specialties our patients need in one place,” he said. “It will be extremely convenient for patients. We will be able to send them for lab work right after the appointment, which will decrease the wait time for results.”

Shorter wait times for results also means less anxiety for patients.

“We all know what it’s like to be waiting for results and being able to have the tests done in the same building where they see their doctor will be a major patient satisfier,” Dr. Solava said. “It’s a beautiful building with great parking. I think our patients will really like it.”

A native of western Pennsylvania, James Solava, D.O. is board-certified in internal medicine and a graduate of the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine. He did his internship and residency at Lankenau Medical Center, near Philadelphia.

He sees patients at:

90 West Chestnut Street
Suite 410
Washington, PA 15301

To make an appointment, please call (724) 430-2395