YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio — Cleveland Clinic has completed its acquisition of Youngstown Orthopaedic Associates, folding the Mahoning Valley practice’s three outpatient locations, more than 100 staff members and a Poland surgery center into the Clinic’s network, the health system announced in a news release on Wednesday, November 11.
The deal, which took effect November 1, brings six orthopaedic physicians, a pain medicine physician, two podiatrists and 12 advanced practice providers onto Cleveland Clinic’s medical staff, according to the Clinic’s release. Youngstown Orthopaedic Associates — known locally as YOA — will keep seeing patients at its existing offices in Boardman, Poland and Warren, and the practice says patients should expect the same providers at the same locations.
The newest piece of the arrangement is The Orthopaedic Surgery Center of Youngstown, the 12,700-square-foot ambulatory surgery center at the Poland location. The center, which has three operating rooms and one procedure room, will operate as a joint venture among Cleveland Clinic, Nashville-based Regent Surgical and local physician shareholders, the release said. Regent began managing the surgery center on November 9, and Cleveland Clinic’s outpatient practice operations begin November 17.
“Youngstown Orthopaedic Associates has a long history of providing high-quality care to patients throughout the Mahoning Valley,” Dr. Thomas E. Mroz, Cleveland Clinic’s enterprise chair of orthopaedic surgery and rehabilitation, said in the Clinic’s release. “By bringing our teams together, we can expand access to coordinated musculoskeletal care, helping patients receive the right care at the right time, close to home, while also connecting them to the full breadth of Cleveland Clinic’s orthopaedic expertise,” Mroz said in the release.
YOA President Dr. Thomas A. Joseph struck a similar note in the same release, saying the practice’s physicians and staff built the practice and surgery center “around a shared commitment to exceptional care and lasting relationships with our patients,” and calling the partnership a chance to add resources “while preserving the personal attention and commitment to our community that have always defined our care.” Regent CEO Travis Messina, also quoted in the release, said the venture pairs Regent’s operational expertise with Cleveland Clinic’s clinical leadership.
The three locations divide the work. The Poland office, at 8591 Crossroads Drive, has 30 exam rooms, three X-ray rooms and dedicated physical and occupational therapy space, plus the surgery center. The Boardman office, at 1499 Boardman-Canfield Road, offers MRI and X-ray imaging and orthopaedic express care with weekday and Saturday hours for acute injuries. The Warren office, at 1695 Niles-Cortland Road N.E., has 12 exam rooms, X-ray capabilities and therapy space. Across the sites, the practice covers orthopaedic surgery, joint reconstruction, sports medicine, hand and upper-extremity care, podiatry, pain management, imaging and therapy, according to the release.
The road to Wednesday’s announcement ran through a courtroom. As Becker’s Spine Review reported when the acquisition was first announced in October, the Surgery Center at Southwoods, a local physician-owned hospital, sued in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court contending that noncompete agreements barred two of the practice’s surgeons from joining Cleveland Clinic. The Business Journal Daily in Youngstown also reported the October announcement and the lawsuit. Wednesday’s release from Cleveland Clinic does not mention the litigation, and the takeover has proceeded on the schedule the practice first laid out in its October letter to patients.
For Mahoning Valley patients, the practical change is coordination: clinic visits, imaging, therapy and outpatient surgery now sit inside one network, so a patient can move from diagnosis through recovery without leaving the community, the Clinic said. It is the latest in a run of health-care investment announcements in the Valley, following the $1 million gift to expand children’s behavioral health in the Mahoning Valley reported earlier this week. Statewide, it also follows OhioHealth’s plan for a $700 million hospital in New Albany, another sign of Ohio systems putting major money into outpatient and hospital capacity this fall.
What we know — and what we’re still waiting on
Confirmed: the acquisition closed November 1; the surgery center is now a Cleveland Clinic–Regent–physician joint venture under Regent’s management as of November 9; and Cleveland Clinic’s outpatient practice operations at the three sites begin November 17. Still open: the status of the Southwoods noncompete litigation, which none of Wednesday’s announcements addressed, and whether the combined practice adds physicians, services or hours beyond the current Monday-through-Friday schedule and Boardman’s Saturday express care.
What happens next is the November 17 start of Cleveland Clinic outpatient operations at the Boardman, Poland and Warren offices. Patients with questions about appointments or records were directed in the practice’s October announcement to their usual office — the locations and phone relationships stay the same, now under a much larger system’s name.
Photo: Pfree2014, CC BY-SA