St. E's Youngstown installing new behavioral/gero-psychiatric unit

YOUNGSTOWN

Work has begun to ready the seventh floor of Mercy Health’s St. Elizabeth Youngstown Hospital to expand its acute care inpatient behavioral health unit and establish a gero-psychiatric unit.

The $5 million project is expected to be completed by January 2016, said Don Koenig, executive vice president and chief operating officer of Mercy Health Youngstown.

St. Elizabeth Youngstown is the fifth Mercy Health hospital in Ohio and Kentucky to be included in its Behavioral Health Expansion Initiative, Koenig said.

The Youngstown project will increase the number of acute-care inpatient beds from 16 to 24 and establish a 14-bed gero-psychiatric inpatient unit.

The project also includes partial hospitalization and intensive outpatient programs for up to 100 people a day, said Lisa Brandyberry, Ph.D., market director for program excellence for all behavioral health units in Mercy Health’s facilities in the Youngstown/Warren area.

The renovation and construction were necessary because the old medical design is not conducive to contemporary programming and environment of care for behavioral-health patients, Koenig said.

With the population aging, a specific unit to take care of them makes sense, Piccirilli said.

Further, he said, the units will help keep patients local instead of being sent out of the county or the state for treatment.

Read more about the plan in Saturday's Vindicator or on Vindy.com.