ROAMING SHORES – Medical care in Ashtabula County, specifically in the southern portion of the county, was a focus of commissioner remarks during a Business Compass hosted by the Rock Creek Area Chamber of Commerce on Friday, Jan. 16, at Paradise Bay in Roaming Shores.
“There’s a lot of concern in south county about the Andover ER hospital closing,” Commissioner J.P. Ducro IV said.
University Hospitals closed its freestanding emergency department in Andover in April 2020.
Ongoing discussions have been had, trying to come up with a solution for that, Ducro said.
“One positive development has been the location of the emergency [AirMed] helicopter and critical care ambulance at the Ashtabula County airport,” Ducro said. “While that’s not a substitute or replacement for Andover, it does give emergency medical-care alternatives closer to that south county area, which we know is really sort of a healthcare desert down there.”
He said it’s a great partnership.
University Hospitals has increased the presence of emergency, critical and specialty care in Ashtabula County by establishing a base for UH AirMed at the Northeast Ohio Regional Airport. UH AirMed is the medical helicopter, critical care ground and specialty care advanced life support transport program at University Hospitals dedicated to safely transporting critically ill and injured patients across Northeast Ohio.
They’re staffing that full time and will be able to respond immediately with the helicopter or with the critical care ambulance, Ducro said.
Further discussion of the medical needs down in southern Ashtabula County took place as a result of questions from a resident in the audience about which hospitals they have reached out to about putting something in south county.
“University Hospitals was there and is the hospital that left,” Commissioner Kathryn Whittington said. “And they still own [the building].”
She said the facility is on the market, and someone could purchase it.
Commissioner Casey Kozlowski said he engaged with Ashtabula Regional Medical Center and had additional conversations with UH to see if they had interest in reopening the facility under some other format.
“We’ve had conversations. We continue to have conversations, but I don’t hear anybody saying, ‘We’re ready to go’ and ready to make this happen,” Kozlowski said.
He was asked what is stopping them from opening a facility.
“That area really needs a hospital,” the resident said.
The commissioners agreed.
Ducro noted that a lot of places closed down during COVID.
“It’s not really a ‘local’ thing. It’s becoming more of this national phenomenon where there’s challenges in healthcare in general. And it seems like more and more of it is being consolidated, where operations are being consolidated,” Kozlowski said.
He said one of the challenges is getting physicians and doctors into the very rural areas.
“We did talk about the idea of, ‘Okay, if you can’t have a physician there every day, or a specialist there every day, can you have them there Monday, Wednesday and Friday, or Tuesday and Thursday? Is there an opportunity to maybe be able to offer services while limited but still helping meet a need in the community?’” Kozlowski shared. “We’ve had those conversations.”
He said they’ve also held conversations about urgent-care facilities.
“I think there’s a recognition that there’s a need,” Kozlowski said.
He stressed he wasn’t speaking ill of the healthcare providers.
“They provide a lot of good services in our county and continue to do so,” Kozlowski said.
Kozlowski said they even looked at other healthcare providers, such as subscription-based healthcare, direct primary care, where you pay a membership fee of some sort to have access to a nurse practitioner or doctor.
“There’s been talk of maybe trying to morph it into something like that,” he said.
The challenge to that they’ve heard is because of the Medicare and Medicaid population.
“Their needs would not be met, because direct primary care is separate from that,” Kozlowski said. “You wouldn’t be able to pay for that service with Medicare or Medicaid.”
He added, “We continue to have those conversations. It’s not off the table, but we just keep hearing there’s challenges in every which direction.”
Kozlowski said they’ve also looked at Mercy Health, the next closest hospital, but they just sold a hospital to UH.
“The conversations continue. We don’t have a solution here today,” Kozlowski said.
He said a “big step forward” was the effort to get the helicopter at the airport.
Whittington said the Ashtabula County Convention Facilities Authority exploring economic development in Andover, the southern part of the County, and a potential hotel is a separate conversation, but it can still relate to other areas.
“If we can get built up in that area, and show that we’re a thriving community, that gets more leverage to the conversation for the medical,” Whittington said.
If they have people coming and staying, they have more leverage to go back to the hospitals and say, “Okay, we now have this,” Whittington said.
She said 4.3 million people come into the Pymatuning Lake area for tourism.
“It is a priority. We’re hoping that building the economic-development piece first, as we’re having these continued conversations, we can then leverage and say, ‘okay, we’re not at 4.3 million people anymore, we have this amount of hotels coming in, we have these things that will bring people,’” Whittington said.
Ducro said it’s about growing the economy so it’s not just Memorial Day to Labor Day.
“It is the #1 question that we face everywhere we go – is ‘When is medical care coming to the southern part of the County?’ It is the #1 question we get,” Whittington said.
