Town hall forum denounces healthcare desert in Mahoning Valley

WARREN -- The Mahoning Valley People's Action Alliance hosted a State of Valley Healthcare town hall Saturday where local residents heard presentations about healthcare issues in the Mahoning Valley.

The town hall was organized in the shadow of both Trumbull Regional Medical Center and Hillside Rehabilitation Hospital closing their doors last year.

Steward Health Care, the previous owner of both facilities, filed for bankruptcy in 2024. Though Insight Health System stepped in as interim operators for both, Insight was forced to close the facilities and surrender its hospital operating license after the Ohio Department of Health cited several inspection failures.

The closure of both facilities has led to what Dr. Janet Shiley, a retired Valley surgeon, called a healthcare desert.

"We're not coming to a healthcare desert, we've been in one," Shiley said. "A healthcare desert is described here as any access that is not there for healthcare issues, whether they be logistical or financial."

Shiley argued that the Mahoning Valley qualifies as a healthcare desert because of the medical services provided by both hospitals being removed from the community.

"These all apply to us in that we've had healthcare closings, we've had business closings, we've had loss of economic backbone in this area and the cost of replacing some of the things we've lost is exorbitant," she said.

Dr. Alexis Smith, a Valley radiologist, argued that increases in medical costs, along with the closures, have created what she calls a "crisis."

"The bottom line is we have several issues in healthcare right now. We have an affordability crisis, we have an access crisis and then we have a staffing crisis," Smith said. "I just heard a report the other day of somebody ... going to get his inhaler, he had severe asthma. His inhaler had quadrupled in price suddenly from all the cuts that are happening. He didn't get the inhaler, and the next day he died."

Smith also argued that healthcare in the Mahoning Valley, and the U.S. more broadly, is suffering from a lack of medical staff. She drew from personal experience in medical school to articulate her argument.

"I was training back in the early 2000s to be a physician. I was in medical school, and we went down to Washington, D.C. and we were lobbying the officials back then, our congressmen and women, telling them that we knew that in 2020 or 2030 there was gonna be a lack of supply of doctors and other healthcare workers," Smith said. "They knew it. We've known it for 20 years at least. We knew that we were not gonna have enough."

Local residents had a chance to share their own perspectives at the town hall. Registered nurse and Cortland resident Luana Andamasaris detailed her husband's declining health because of fluid building up in his brain, and his need for specialized neurosurgery that was unavailable locally.

"The healthcare desert that we have affected mine and my husband's lives. The lack of healthcare personnel, especially specialists, and the decreasing available diagnostic test openings devastated our family," Andamasaris said. "Because there are no local neurologists that care for this issue, we were referred to Cleveland Clinic. There was no availability there for six weeks."

After several referrals and months going to different facilities between Cleveland and Pittsburgh, Andamasaris' husband got an appointment for the neurosurgery he needed, but by then his condition worsened, leading to his death.

"Our appointment to actually see a real neurosurgeon was going to be six months after his initial symptoms started. His appointment for the neurosurgeon was two months away, and he had actually expired two days later," Andamasaris said. "My takeaway point for all of this is that healthcare access in the Valley needs to be improved."

The town hall's organizers, like Lisa Kohler from the League of Women Voters, stressed that local residents need to vote if they want to help improve the situation, saying, "please, use your voice. Vote your conscience."