YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – Mercy Health – St. Elizabeth Youngstown Hospital opened a 16-bed neurointensive care unit Monday, expanding the hospital’s capability of serving stroke and brain and spinal cord surgery patients.
The $20 million project involved extensive renovations to an area of the hospital that recently became available due to a partnership with Lifepoint to create stand-alone facilities on Belmont Avenue.
Instead of four neurointensive care unit beds, St. Elizabeth Youngstown can now serve 16 of the most critical patients at the Level I Trauma Center.
Martin Tursky, chief operation officer of Mercy Health – Lorain and Youngstown, said the project was part of the hospital’s long-term strategic plan for some time.
“We had some of the services, but we didn’t have enough of the services to provide it for the volume of patients we get,” Tursky said. “Our growth has been exponential in this market. … That demand has just really pushed us to develop the acuity level of our care.”
Along with the two interventional radiology suites, one of which is open and another just finishing construction, Tursky said the ICU unit and the Mercy Health Rehabilitation Hospital on Belmont Avenue represent a major investment by the hospital system for stroke and brain injury patients. He said when someone has a stroke, they require immediate care, and the new neurointensive care unit better equips St. Elizabeth Youngstown to provide that care to more patients.
“We knew first that we needed to find space, and that space we needed to find just coincided with our new acute rehab hospital, which is our joint venture with Lifepoint,” said Kathey Harley, CEO and president of St. Elizabeth Youngstown. “This was one of the larger spaces in the hospital, which was great because it afforded us the amount of rooms that we needed to build.”
Harley said the new neurointensive care unit rooms located on the fifth floor of the downtown hospital are much bigger and private, allowing space for the equipment needed to treat patients with serious neurological needs.
The rehab hospital on Belmont opened in November 2024, and Harley said work began immediately to take apart the old rooms to the studs and ceiling beams. The hospital continued to operate around the work and Harley said she was thankful to the construction crew that worked within the constraints of cleanliness and noise level to keep other neighboring floors operating.
Heather McCowin, chief nursing officer at Mercy Health – St. Elizabeth Youngstown, said the new unit will allow for a nursing care ratio of one-on-one or one-on-two for patients. Registered nurses, nurse practitioners, neurosurgeons and interventional doctors specializing in neurological care will all be centrally available for patients and stationed at newly designed nearby workstations, using brand new equipment.
Tursky said the neurointensive care unit and other neurological investments will allow patients to stay close to home and receive continued care instead of having to travel longer distances. And with all the investments in the future, the hospital should be capable of becoming a comprehensive stroke center.
“For us to have this type of service, to be able to treat you immediately, to be able to get you into neurointensive care and then to be able to follow up with rehab on that, to get you back to operating as you were previously – if you had any deficits – just means the world for this community,” he said. “If you think about your family, your friends, you and what you would want for them, this is what you would want.”
Pictured at top: Kathy Harley, CEO and president of St. Elizabeth Youngstown Hospital.