Opened in 2007 as part of Marshall University's Robert C. Byrd Center for Rural Health, the $23.5 million, 80,000 square foot, four-story Erma Ora Byrd Clinical Center is located at the former Fairfield Stadium site two blocks from the main medical center complex and houses medical student teaching classrooms, clinical education facilities and patient care clinics that have enabled the School of Medicine to increase the size of its medical school class by almost 50%, making it possible for Marshall to increase the number of well-trained doctors practicing in southern West Virginia and surrounding areas.

The Erma Ora Byrd Clinical Center was made possible through the efforts of the late U.S. Senator Robert C. Byrd and is named in honor of his late wife.

The ground floor of the new facility contains medical student education resources, including a 125 seat tiered classroom, several smaller classrooms, student study and lounge areas and a relaxing outdoor courtyard. A Clinical Skills Center is included where medical students and residents can develop and hone their patient care skills using both computer-based models and live simulated patients, before moving into the "live" patient care settings contained on the upper floors.

Three floors of patient care and clinical education space above provide expanded patient care capacity for up to 75,000 patient visits per year. Services on the second and third floors include General Internal Medicine and the medical specialties of Endocrinology, Gastroenterology, Infectious Diseases, Pulmonary Medicine and Rheumatology. The Hanshaw Geriatric Center and Marshall's Chertow Diabetes Center are also located here. The top floor houses the School's Department of Cardiovascular Services whose faculty focus on the heart diseases that disproportionately affect southern West Virginia and its aging population. It also contains a diagnostic imaging suite which includes a recently installed Phillips Brilliance iCT 128 SP scanner for use in cardiac and other diagnostic screening, including a federally supported initiative to develop and enhance the use of colonography as a screening tool for colorectal disease, In addition to expanding the School of Medicine's educational and patient care capacity the new Center employs in excess of 50 physicians and 150 staff and generates more the $20 million in direct economic activity annually.