St. E’s Boardman shuffles 7th floor services

St. Elizabeth Boardman Health Center held a blessing and dedication ceremony for its 20-bed expansion recently. The hospital opened its top floor of the hospital to increase its inpatient capacity.

Patients started being admitted to the unit soon after the dedication.

The new unit will be used for surgery patients, including those in the Orthopaedics by Design Joint Venture program.

Joint Venture is an innovative joint-replacement surgery program that focuses on educating patients on what to expect from the surgery and helping patients return to an active lifestyle.

St. Elizabeth Boardman opened Aug. 1, 2007. At that time, the seventh floor was meant to be a pediatric unit run by Akron Children’s Hospital. Akron Children’s deemed the space too small for its needs, however and opened a larger pediatric facility on Market Street in Boardman.

Select Specialty Hospital, a long-term acute care hospital, then used the vacant floor for over a year. Recently, however, St. Elizabeth Boardman saw the need to increase the number of inpatient beds available for inpatients.

Earlier this year, Select relocated to St. Joseph Health Center in Warren.

Select has also provided service at St. Elizabeth Health Center in Youngstown for 10 years.