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Our opinion: Healthy outcomes at Warren General

The turnaround in Warren General Hospital’s finances continues to be remarkable — but it’s the facelift that reversal of financial fortune is enabling that is truly striking.

The hospital ended its 2021-22 fiscal year with a surplus of $4.4 million. That’s a far cry from the substantial losses the hospital had been reporting. Hospital leadership’s difficult negotiations with the union representing Warren General Hospital’s nurses would make little sense until one sees the facelift happening inside the hospital. The overall age of Warren General Hospital’s physical plant decreased over the past year while adding a $5 million linear accelerator and vault in the cancer center, making first-stage improvements in the Emergency Department, opening a new pediatric rehabilitation clinic, improving the parking garage, purchasing a 3D mammography unit and stereotactic breast biopsy equipment, relocating its surgical services and renovating its behavioral health unit and four-bed detox unit.

New doctors and services added or acquired through the year include: gastroenterologist Dr. William Wismer, general surgeon Dr. Yoko Young-Sang, family medicine physician Dr. Megan Church, Family Medicine of Warren – “with nearly 10,000 patient charts,” Allen said – the former Allegheny Health Network OB/GYN practice in North Warren, and telestroke and teleneurology services.

All of that means more, and better, care is available here in Warren without county residents having to go elsewhere for care.

Warren General Hospital is in an enviable position compared to many small hospitals nationally.According to a 2021 Pew Charitable Trust survey, profit margins for rural hospitals were expected to decline 38% in 2021. Had Warren General Hospital fallen into that category, the hospital wouldn’t have been able to invest in its staff and equipment the way it has in 2021-22 — and we’d be having a much different conversation regarding the hospital.

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