Ellwood City hospital officially closes

Ellwood City Medical Center is officially closed — and now state and federal officials are looking into the hospital’s dealings, officials say.

The Pennsylvania Department of Health had previously issued the facility a Provisional 2 license, which has now expired, DOH press secretary Nate Wardle said. The hospital was unable to meet the minimum requirements to return to a regular license, which would have reopened the facility, he said. 

Wardle said the state health department has been in communication with the ECMC and its leadership for an extended period of time. 

The hospital posted the news on its official Facebook page Friday afternoon, adding that medical records could still be obtained by calling 724-752-0081. A call to that number went unanswered and to a voicemail, as did a call to Americore Health, which has been the medical center’s Florida-based parent company since 2017.

After weeks of inactivity at the Pershing Street building, the FBI raided the hospital on Thursday. An FBI spokeswoman confirmed the office was “conducting law enforcement activity.”

Ellwood City Mayor Anthony J. Court expressed his disappointment late Friday afternoon about the closure.

“(Americore Health LLC is) under state and federal investigations,” Court said. “The FBI was in town (Thursday) for approximately three to four hours. They confiscated a lot of material from the hospital.”

He could offer no further details on the inquiry, but said the town will now have to deal with the consequences of the closure.

“The saga, as I like to call it, continues as we continue to struggle without our medical center,” Court said. “This is a terrible situation to be in, and we should not be in the situation we are in.”

The news of the hospital closure is the end of more than a year of unrest at the borough’s lone medical facility.

The Lawrence County District Attorney’s Office served a search warrant last January in relation to a vender not receiving payment. By December, the hospital had furloughed all of its employees, saw its emergency department shut down and had a ban placed on new admissions. Americore filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Dec. 30, 2019.

Wardle said the health department had hoped the facility “would be able to return to compliance in order to serve the residents of Ellwood City and surrounding areas.”

Court said the closure of the hospital is disheartening, but vowed the borough will do what it can within the scope of the law to see the facility reopened.

“What we’ve been doing here, the attorney general’s office has been involved, the FBI has been involved, as we reach out to get our medical center back,” Court said. “Legally, that is where we are at this time.”

Court said the community’s options are limited.

“Our hands are tied as far as that goes with other medical facilities. For one thing, we don’t own the hospital. They have jurisdiction because they own the hospital and there is the bankruptcy. We have to go about things legally,” he said.

The hospital’s temporary closing in late November — which was in conjunction with the ER closure and ban on new patients — has sent ripples through the Ellwood City borough. Aside from laying off its employees, the borough is still trying to recoup around $300,000 in unpaid electric and sewage bills. 

Additionally, the borough police department has had additional overtime costs with officers now having to drive suspected drunken drivers to UPMC Jameson in New Castle for blood tests.

The borough spent around $10,000 on a blood-testing machine of its own, which should be operational by February, Court said earlier this month.

A Pennsylvania American Water spokesman on Tuesday declined to say if the hospital was current on its water payments. 

The hospital, which had been losing money since 1998, was sold in March 2017 to Americore, a privately held company fronted by former investment banker Grant R. White. Its bankruptcy case is being tried in Kentucky, where the company also ran a hospital. 

“Our community is strong,” Court said. “We are going to keep on top of the situation with federal authorities and state authorities, and, hopefully, we can get our medical center back through the legal system as soon as possible.”

Assistant editor Brent Addleman contributed to this story.