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Acquisition of East Liverpool City Hospital completed

EAST LIVERPOOL – With a new owner in place for East Liverpool City Hospital, many doctors and community members are now looking toward a positive future.

The merger of River Valley Health Partners and Prime Healthcare Foundation brought news of joy and a sense of optimism for the future during a meeting Wednesday evening at the hospital’s education conference room.

Prime’s acquisition of RVHP, which included the hospital, River Valley Physicians LLC and Ohio Valley Home Health Services, was completed Monday.

Ruben Garza, interim CEO at the hospital, spoke about his experiences at several hospitals throughout the country, as well as Prime’s work, which he said had been able to bring several much-needed services to communities across the country as “a hospital-missionary company.”

“We look for hospitals in communities that want to have their hospital viable in that area and to serve the medical needs of that community,” he said. “That is what we’re looking for because we believe, and we’re very confident that what we do is that we can go in there, re-energize that hospital, bring it back to life and be successful and provide all those services the community needs. It’s been proven over and over again, and we don’t shy

away from those opportunities, we embrace it.”

Garza also pointed out the foundation’s plans as well as implementations they look to present, and expressed confidence that with upcoming improvements, the hospital can not only become viable within six months, but will be busy within a year.

“We believe that in three months, this organization here will be breaking even,” Garza said. “In six months, it’s going to be viable financially. In one year, you’re going to be seeing a lot of activity here, new services. We’re going to be revitalizing a lot of things going on.”

Some of the key services Garza said Prime looks to improve in the beginning include surgery, cardiology, a cath lab and increases in primary care physician base and gastroenterology, with other services to be considered for the future.

“We believe that there’s a lot of need for surgery,” Garza said. “Right now we have locals to come to the hospital and provide the service for us, which is great, but we want more permanent positions here on a local basis.

“Another thing that we’re looking at is that we want to increase our primary care physician base, and add family practice into our medicine. We want to look into this and approve more physicians on that line so that they can feed our specialty physicians.”

Many doctors who were on hand expressed support for the new owners, including Dr. Bob Walker, and Dr. Gretchen Nickell, who acknowledged the organization’s knowledge and dedication to service.

“I’m thrilled that Prime has come in and these guys are really good in knowing their stuff,” Walker said. “I’ve been to several meetings already, and I was amazed at how many ways of fixing things that need fixing, and they’re very impressive.”

“I think the merger for us, the most important thing about it is Prime’s dedication to quality,” Nickell said. “Their quality standards are supreme. They really are focused on best practices, so from a medical standpoint, that to me is most important. Obviously we have to be able to make a profit, we have to break even, we have to keep the doors open.”

Some doctors also spoke up, including Dr. Terrence Zipfell, and Dr. Sunil Parulkar, who noted previously downsizing and concerns throughout the hospital.

“All I can say is as past president of the medical staff, it’s been a trying year,” Zipfell said. “There were ups and downs, and we had legitimate concerns really about the sustainability of the hospital and its future. I know I speak for the entire medical staff by saying that I’m extremely excited and pleased for the completion of the transaction and the future, and we thank Prime.”

“A few years ago, we were a very vibrant, active surgical medical staff, and we had many services within the department of surgery, and now for the lack of surgical services and physicians, we have to consolidate the services as one department as surgical services,” Parulkar said. “I hope that in a few more years or a few more months down the road, I hope we will have more surgery, orthopedics, urology.”

The comment about Prime serving as a hospital-missionary company struck a chord for Dr. John Wright, who stated he has also done missionary work throughout Africa, including Rwanda, and also said that quality health care for the community is a need.

“When Ruben mentioned that the other night at the medical exec meeting, the missionary aspect is so compelling to me,” Wright said. “To be able to be a corporation today that obviously wants to be successful but obviously has a missionary component to save communities and their health care system, that’s a combination that’s hard to beat and they’ve been able to maintain that integrity through 48 hospitals. That’s pretty impressive, Lord only knows.”

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