SHARON, Pa. – Sharon Regional Medical Center is set to reopen at 7 a.m. Tuesday, even as Penn-Northwest Development Corp. continues working to finalize the $11 million in operating resources anticipated to be needed to give the hospital the best chance of succeeding.
Rod Wilt, executive director of Penn-Northwest, said the first departments slated to open Tuesday morning are the emergency department, mental health department and X-ray services, but a significant portion of the facility is now licensed and ready to operate.
“We don’t have that [working capital] completely finalized yet, but we’re close,” Wilt said, adding that he found the open house held by Tenor Health Foundation Sharon LLC on Sunday for employees and the community “very uplifting.”
The hospital closed Jan. 6, eight months after Steward Health Care System filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Houston, Texas.
Tenor paid $1.9 million to operate the hospital and was named the new owner only days after the hospital closed its doors. However, it was unable to get approval from the Pennsylvania Department of Health for weeks, reportedly due to patient safety concerns that had to be addressed first.
Many of the hospital’s longtime employees were waiting for the hospital to reopen instead of looking for other jobs, despite the uncertainty of the situation.
“There’s a lot of employees that have worked there a really long time, who have stuck around to make sure that the hospital is running the way it should run in order to give it a really, really good chance of being successful,” Wilt said.
Bringing back so many of the former Sharon Regional employees is key, Wilt said, because so many are “deeply committed to the hospital’s success.”
Some employees have already been working to get things ready, and once all departments are back up and running, the hospital will employ about 600.
“Now the community just has to support it,” Wilt said.