Retirement forcing health center to close

An agreement has been reached in principle with Forum Health to take over patient care.

Staff Report

AUSTINTOWN — The Austintown Health Care Center has been accepting patients for more than 30 years but will shut its doors at the end of the week.

In a statement released Sunday night, Jim Conti, the center’s owner, said his retirement had caused the closing of the facility.

“It’s been a long time coming,” Conti said in the statement. “I’ve been in the health-care business for 30 years, and it’s time to retire.”

The health center’s emergency-room treatment will cease today at 6 p.m. The facility will continue to accept its occupational-therapy patients until 6 p.m. Friday.

An agreement has been reached in principle with Forum Health to transition patients into Forum’s facilities after those dates. Forum has an immediate-care facility across the street from the Austintown Health Care Center building on Canfield-Niles Road.

“I wanted to make sure our emergency-room and occupational- service patients continue to get great care, so we worked out an arrangement to transfer services to Forum,” Conti said in the statement.

George Farris, of Farris Marketing, which represents the health center, said Conti’s retirement came as a shock to patients but had been considered for a few months.

“He’s been in it 30 years, and it’s always a shock when somebody’s doctor retires, but eventually, people do retire,” Farris said. “It just got to the point where he wanted to retire.”

According to a separate release from Farris, an agreement with Forum has been in the works for about 18 months but has yet to be finalized due to the instability of Forum’s finances.

Forum operates Northside Medical Center in Youngstown, Trumbull Memorial Hospital in Warren, Hillside Rehabilitation Hospital in Howland and immediate-care centers in Austintown and Hubbard.