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St. E's to Build 4-Story Acute-Care Hospital in Boardman
By Dennis LaRueBOARDMAN, Ohio -- In what he described as "the largest project in our history," the president and chief executive officer of Humility of Mary Health Partners announced today that St. Elizabeth Health Center will build a four-story general-acute hospital on its Boardman campus that will open in summer 2007.The president and CEO, Robert Shroder, and Genie Aubel, senior vice president of post-acute services at the Boardman campus, said HMHP's board of directors have approved spending $77 million to build the 250,000-square-foot facility that will offer 108 inpatient beds, 96 of which will be for medical or surgical patients. It will also offer five operating suites and a 12-bed intensive care unit.When completed, the project will add nearly 400 jobs to the 109 now employed at the Boardman campus, Shroder said. Because the architect has not been selected, he offered no renderings of what the structure would look like.All patient rooms will be private, Aubel said, each with its own bathroom and shower. All rooms will also offer the convenience of in-room Internet access. And, she said, all rooms will be wired for paperless medical records.The cost of the facility, to be built adjacent to the emergency and diagnostic center, will be paid for internally. Neither HMHP nor St. E's will issue tax-free municipal bonds to fund the effort, Shroder said. The emergency and diagnostic center is a building with 56,000 square feet.Shroder and Aubel anticipate a ceremonial ground breaking the first quarter of next year and that construction will be fully under way by next summer. St. E's is looking at simultaneously building "a major medical office building" nearby, Aubel reported. It would not be owned by HMHP but insteady by an independent contractor who would lease space to independent physician-practitioners. The doctors would not be HMHP employees, Aubel said.The new hospital -- the largest such facility to be built in the Mahoning Valley since 1958, Shroder said -- has been studied the past two years. St. Elizabeth's is "routinely at full capacity," causing delays in admission, the CEO said.Moreover, "population shifts" in the Valley dictate that the hospital be built in Boardman and serve as a "feeder" to St. E's on Belmont Avenue, Youngstown, "the largest tertiary-care and teaching hospital" in the Valley, Shroder said. The center of Mahoning County's population has been shifting south and more than 60% of the patients served by the HMHP system live in southern Mahoning County and northern Columbiana County.St. Joseph's Hospital, Warren, offers 140 beds and St. E's on Belmont 460 beds. And HMHP has found that an increasing number of people seeking treatment are from Lawrence County, Pa., "which we didn't do before," Shroder remarked. The Boardman campus is on course to treat 21,000 to 22,000 people in its emergency rooms in Boardman, he added.The acute-care hospital should prove adequate at least 10 years and the building will be designed to allow for expansion, Shroder said.Visit Humility of Mary Health Partners at www.hmpartners.orgContact Dennis LaRue at [email protected]"