Cleveland Clinic will offer primary care in Mahoning and Trumbull counties, starting next week.
The hospital system will hire primary care providers who were previously employed by Steward Health Care — the private-equity-backed hospital operator that went bankrupt last year.
Offices will be located in Austintown, Warren, Niles, Howland and Kinsman.
Dr. James Gutierrez, chairman of Cleveland Clinic’s Primary Care Institute, said patients who live in those areas will now have more access to the Clinic system.
"These physicians will also be connected with specialists and diagnostic capabilities and surgical capabilities that really are only offered at larger tertiary or quaternary hospitals like the Cleveland Clinic," he said. "It'll be easier for patients to have access to those services when their health demands it."
Patients will see changes as they schedule appointments and access information through MyChart, he said.
After the Steward bankruptcy, some community leaders worried about declining health care access in the Youngtown-Warren region, where hospitals had been closing for years.
Gutierrez said the system’s vision for serving the Warren-Youngstown community didn’t include buying the struggling Steward-owned hospitals, which were instead acquired by Michigan-based Insight Health Systems.
“In the end, our leadership team felt that the best way to get started was to start with primary care, bring on that base of patients," he said.
Some of the practices will remain in their current leased facilities, while others will move to new locations, which will open under Clinic operation on Feb. 17, Gutierrez said.
