ST. ELIZABETH HEALTH CENTER Surgery center begins $10 million expansion

The project will add 10,000 square feet and a dozen new operating rooms.
By WILLIAM K. ALCORN
VINDICATOR HEALTH WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- St. Elizabeth Health Center officially kicked off a $10 million expansion and renovation of its surgery center located on the third floor of the Heart Lab building near the hospital.
When the project is finished by the end of 2006, it will add to the hospital 10,000 square feet and a dozen new operating rooms, including seven that will be 600 square feet each, said Jim Davis, executive vice president of Humility of Mary Health Partners and chief operating officer of St. Elizabeth.
St. Elizabeth will remain the cornerstone of the HMHP network of health-care facilities, said Bob Shroder, chief executive officer and president of HMHP.
"We will continue to reinvest in this facility," he said Thursday.
Shroder said this project will bring operating rooms built in the 1950s and 1970s up to modern standards and sizes.
Four phases
The project will be done in four phases so as not to interfere with the ongoing surgical services, said Wayne Tennant, St. Elizabeth vice president of facilities.
Phase one, currently under way, includes the construction and renovation of one operating suite and storage areas.
Phase two includes the inside renovation of the top floors of the Heart Lab and portions of the hospital's current west wing.
Phases three and four will include the renovations of the remaining areas, officials said.
The Heart Lab, an outpatient heart and vascular facility, is on the first floor of the $6 million, three-story, 30,000-square-foot building on the south side of the hospital's main facility. It opened in 2003.
Joint venture
The Heart Lab is a joint venture between HMHP and several individual cardiologists and cardiologist groups, who own 49 percent of the facility and operate it.
The second floor will house a waiting area for patients' families, officials said.
A large contingent of the hospital's operating room staff attended Thursday's ceremony, including Drs. Mounir Awad, chairman of the surgery department at St. Elizabeth, and Gene Potesta, president of the hospital's medical staff.
"We will have the latest technology enabling us to bring the best medicine can offer to this community," Dr. Awad said.
The project, which received a $393,000 Health and Human Services grant through the auspices of U.S. Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, will help continue HMHP's mission of providing health care to the Valley, particularly its poor and underserved residents, said Atty. Leonard Schiavone, vice chairman of the HMHP board of directors.
alcorn@vindy.com