YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – With the resurrection of Sharon Regional Health System nearly a year ago and other long-standing options, local health care is expanding to meet the needs of patients.
The Tenor Health Foundation, a nonprofit formed by Tenor Health Partners, acquired the closed Sharon hospital in January 2025 following the Steward Health Care System Bankruptcy, reopening it in March 2025.
A year later, the hospital is expanding the services it offers and physicians, nurses and staff are returning.
“Bringing a hospital back on board after being closed is quite the challenge,” says Todd Tamalunas, the third interim CEO at Sharon Regional Health System since the hospital reopened. “I’d say at this point, the organization’s full steam ahead, moving forward with different service lines such as cardiac services, our hospitalist program and our ER – things that you have to have to be a hospital, honestly.”
In January 2026, Sharon Regional partnered with Butler Memorial Hospital, of the Independence Health System, to revive advanced cardiac services. Dr. Richard Begg, medical director of the cardiovascular service line, says heart disease is the number one killer and a full cardiovascular service line is basic acute care.
At Sharon, patients get that care close to home, while the connection with Butler means sharing resources for complex surgeries.
“The staff has been unbelievably supportive,” says Begg, who also came from Butler. “It’s actually heartwarming. The people have put their time and effort into keeping and now reopening Sharon hospital. We just don’t want to let them down. We want to keep building this program to where we think it can be. And we have a lot of experienced operators here, and I think a lot of good is going to come out of this relationship.”
Tamalunas says Sharon recently expanded from 14 to 24 adult behavioral health beds. The loss of behavioral health when the hospital closed was devastating to patients and their families, Tamalunas says.
The hospital has reopened its Intensive Care Unit and Tamalunas wants the internal medicine residency program and nursing training programs to reopen to attract more talent.
Corporate Health
Teresa Trontel, director of corporate health at Sharon, a 40-year-old program serving nearly 650 companies throughout the Shenango Valley, says it provides physicals, drug and alcohol screens and workers’ compensation treatment.
During the closure, other hospitals were inundated with serious patients, leaving typical work-related injuries, with long waits.
“I can tell you during the closure it was difficult,” Trontel says. “We got a lot of calls. We had a lot of people, who just had nowhere [close] to go… When we reopened, they all came back.”
The basic wound care program also has reopened, including many of the same nurses and staff. Trontel credits the staff throughout the hospital, who have connections with local patients and stayed, with being a catalyst for the hospital’s return.
In Mercer County, a rural health clinic will reopen by the end of February with a new provider.
Sharon Moving Forward
Reopening a hospital, especially one that needs so many repairs, means reinvesting strategically in long-lasting hospital infrastructure, not just patching problems, according to Tamalunas. It also means hiring staff, expanding primary care services and adding equipment. And because it’s a nonprofit, Tamalunas believes the process needs to be a patient-centered community effort.
He sees the approaching one-year anniversary in March as “a steppingstone” to fully reopening all the services and maintaining the hospital long term.
“You know we have a long way to go, but sustainability comes piece by piece,” he says.
Everyday Tamalunas says he speaks to someone who is excited the hospital is back and growing in the right direction. At one point, the hospital served 200 patients a day.
“The staff is energized for being open,” Tamalunas says. “The community is extremely excited that we’re open… For me the challenges are going to be just moving forward at a strategic pace. We can’t be all things to all people right now.”
While Sharon Regional has returned, other Steward bankruptcy casualties, Insight Hospital and Medical Center Trumbull in Warren, and Hillside Rehabilitation Hospital in Howland, remain closed.
Insight Health System, another non-profit organization, obtained the rights to operate those facilities and kept the Warren hospital open at first, then closed it, reopened it for about 10 weeks and closed it again in late November 2025. In January, Insight surrendered its license, but indicated it plans to reapply.
Mercy Health
In its absence, Mercy Health’s St. Elizabeth Hospital-Youngstown, St. Elizabeth Hospital-Boardman and St. Joseph Hospital-Warren are among those filling the health care gap in the Mahoning Valley.
Dr. John Luellen, Mercy Health’s Ohio president, says the recent Mercy projects are part of a long-term strategy, not in reaction to the loss of the Warren hospital.
Mercy is building a $30 million, stand-alone 30,000 square-foot emergency and imaging center in Champion. “That project is moving along nicely,” Luellen says. “We’ve been blessed with dry weather, albeit cold weather… the steel frame of the building is now complete and we continue to work toward a planned February of 2027 opening.”
He says hospital administration hopes to begin identifying employees for that location soon.
Mercy Health Rehabilitation Hospital, a 66,000-square-foot, two-story facility opened in Liberty Township in November 2024 and next door, the Mercy Health Behavioral Health Hospital opened in December 2025. Both were built through a partnership with Lifepoint.
In 2025, Mercy doubled the capacity of its neuro interventional suite at St. Elizabeth-Youngstown, a necessity for stroke patients. And the hospital is considering a similar project in Boardman, one of Mercy’s busiest Ohio emergency rooms, the Ohio president says.
Through these efforts, Luellen hopes to elevate the stroke center statuses of all of Mercy’s local hospitals, including St. Elizabeth-Youngstown, which is already a level one trauma and comprehensive breast care center.
“Whether it be breast care, trauma, cardiac care or stroke care, for those time sensitive services, we don’t want people to need to leave the region,” Luellen says. “We think we can provide that service and we think we can provide it at a level of quality that is equal to any of our competitors across the state.”
At both St. Joseph and Boardman, maternity care is available and difficult to find elsewhere in the region. The Boardman hospital’s maternity unit is the busiest of any in the Bon Secours Mercy Health footprint.
“We don’t have an intention to change that,” Luellen says. “But we’re continuously looking at the services provided to be sure that we can do it in a manner that is of the highest quality and fiscally sustainable.”
The financial pressures impacting health are a challenge, Luellen admits. Insurance, federal and state reimbursement structures are constantly changing, forcing health care providers, especially in rural areas, to adapt.
“When you take a mission-driven approach to the care you provide, rather than approaching care decisions purely from a business perspective, it causes you to look through a different lens,” Luellen says. “It can be difficult to be all things to all people. Yet at the same time, we try to identify those core services that the community needs and do the best we can to fill those voids.”
Salem Regional Medical Center
Anita Hackstedde, president and CEO of Salem Regional Medical Center, says the hospital also looks for services and partnerships that can make a difference locally for patients. New pain treatments, virtual colonoscopies and cardiac CT angiography, a heart catherization-like procedure, are locally unique to the hospital and bring patients from outside the immediate area, she says.
A partnership with University Hospitals Seidman Cancer Center, allows patients to access cancer treatments.
“We’ve got the latest and greatest linear accelerator,” Hackstedde says. “So, for a small little hospital, we are very blessed to be able to offer that to our community. We want them to stay close to home going through things like that. You need your family and friends to support you. Nobody wants to travel an hour and a half to get treatment.”
And Salem has been expanding. It launched an occupational health and urgent care facility in North Jackson, and earlier this week it announced an affiliation starting Monday with the long-standing family practice of Dr. Jay R. Lugigihl in Kensington in Columbiana County. In 2024, a primary care office opened in Canfield.
A 76,000-square-foot surgery and outpatient pavilion opened in 2024 in Columbiana and Hackstedde says patient use of that facility, especially for infusions, continues to grow. She sees a future where more services once performed at a hospital become outpatient services.
“Our imaging centers are just getting very busy and that’s nice to see,” Hackstedde says. “And those are our lower cost, more convenient options, lower cost than what a hospital can offer.”
SRMC remains one of the few independent hospitals in the region. But it joined the Ohio High Value Network, a group of 30 independent hospitals, which work together to share best practices and support services to lower costs.
As an independent hospital, its board members live and work in the community and make decisions based on the needs of the area, she says.
“There’s not a big, giant corporate structure that folks have to go to,” Hackstedde says. “I think we can be a lot nimbler and more responsive, whether it’s to patient needs, to our physicians, to our staff.”
Independence also means no big support system, so SRMC must remain fiscally responsible especially during challenging times. The OHVN offers more of a voice when discussing rural health care challenges with government and commercial payers.
While recruitment is another challenge, Hackstedde says the hospital sees success recruiting physicians from the area to return.
“They go off, they do their training and they want to come back home because they want to take care of their community,” Hackstedde says. “And I think that’s what makes us different. We want to take care of our community. We’re devoted to that and so we want to be all in for our patients.”
Akron Children’s
Paul Olivier, vice president of Akron Children’s Mahoning Valley, says the hospital ensures access to pediatricians as fewer physicians are entering private pediatric practice because of expenses.
And the growth of the Akron Children’s Beeghly campus in Boardman allows Mahoning Valley children to receive many specialty services without traveling to Akron.
Akron Children’s has added physician offices in local communities, school-based clinics and virtual visits for some consultations.
Ronald McDonald House Charities recently donated a mobile care unit, which has been to libraries and community housing locations, providing well visits, sick care and immunizations.
“I think it’s the most obvious example of creating access for patients,” says Olivier.
Akron Children’s also is ensuring access to nutritious food through the Food Farmacy program. Physicians may refer a family with food insecurity to the Farmacy, located on the Beeghly campus.
The Locker Room, a new program at Beeghly, provides young athletes free or low-cost sports equipment. Olivier says having the right, well-fitted equipment is essential for preventing injuries and The Locker Room accepts donations of new and gently used equipment.
“Our athletic trainers will screen it, clean and make sure the equipment’s safe to give out again,” he says.
In April, Akron Children’s will open a pharmacy on campus, filling a need as many area pharmacies close.
“Sometimes local pharmacies don’t have the pediatric version compound,” says Olivier.
The Boardman campus spans five buildings and averaged 2,500 surgeries, mostly outpatient, each year for the past few years.
While the campus does not have expansion plans, Olivier says Akron Children’s is expanding the Warren Health Center, a $5 million project adding 14 exam rooms by the end of 2026.
Over the past year, Akron Children’s has hired 10 advanced nurse practitioners and nine physicians, including one specializing in ears, nose and throat. Additionally, a clinic opened for all local children at Warren G. Harding High School.
“We do see the growing needs of the pediatric population in terms of behavioral health, making sure they are getting their vaccines, addressing the misinformation piece and just creating that access,” Olivier says. “Because there are a lot of challenges for parents and the health care their kids need. So, the more we can be out there engaging with the communities and the parents, the better off the children are going to be and the better off our community will be in the long run.”
Pictured at top: Todd Tamalunas is the interim CEO at Sharon Regional Health System.
