AUSTINTOWN Expanded medical park will have room to grow

The project is to be completed by the summer.
AUSTINTOWN -- The expanded medical park on Ohltown Road has been designed to accommodate a high-tech emergency room, although Forum Health has no immediate plans to open one, an executive told the Austintown Growth Foundation.
"If the community needs one there, we will put it in," said Karl Kuppler, a Forum Health senior vice president.
Last year, Forum Health began a $3.4 million renovation of its Austintown Medical Park, purchased out of bankruptcy in 1997.
The 3,300-square-foot building houses offices for eight medical practices, a laboratory and a radiology unit. When the 15,000-square-foot addition opens in June, the facility also will include an immediate care center and rehabilitation center and a more complete assortment of imaging and radiology machines.
The immediate care center will be open from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. for the treatment of "minor illnesses and minor injuries," Kuppler said. A physician will be on duty, but the immediate care center is not designed for the treatment of life-theatening emergencies like chest pains or major trauma.
The space which will be occupied by the rehabilitation center was built so it could be converted to a full-fledged emergency room.
Quotable: "Some time down the road, this community may be asking for a full-service emergency department, and this is where we would put one at that time," Kuppler said. "It gives the community a chance to see if they like the level of services being offered at this location."
The decision to open an emergency room would be made based on the volume and severity of the cases coming into the immediate care center, he said.
Forum will add the equivalent of 14 or 16 full-time employees to the medical park when the addition opens.