Staff photo / R. Michael Semple Dr. Anthony Russo of Canfield, left, works with medical assistant Christine Spisak of Campbell during an open house Tuesday at the new Steward Primary and Multispecialty Care in Austintown.

AUSTINTOWN — A new access point for health care is available to residents in southern Trumbull and northern Mahoning counties, growth that enables Steward Medical Group to bring patient care closer to home.

The opening of Steward Primary and Multispecialty Care, Mahoning County, in Austintown, expands the health care provider’s footprint to three primary care and specialty facilities within a quarter-mile corridor on state Route 46 south from Ohltown Road.

There are 11 primary care physicians and seven specialty care doctors among the facilities.

“The goal is always to provide the highest quality of compassionate care, but to keep it in our local communities, specifically for me, to be able to have these services in Austintown,” said Dr. James Shina, primary care physician and medical director, Steward Medical Group. “It’s just a wonderful feeling to be able to provide that for our patients and again, for the community.”

Shina, also vice president of Steward Health Care Network and co-owner of the new facility, 1440 S. Canfield Niles Road, is a 1996 graduate of Austintown Fitch High School. He earned his medical degree from the former Northeast Ohio Universities College of Medicine in Rootstown via Youngstown State University.

“One of my dreams was to come back and start a practice here, which I was able to do thankfully with my mentor and great friend, Dr. Mike DeVine …” Shina said.

The $2.6 million, two-story building contains 15 exam rooms on the first floor, which is 10,000 square feet of medical space for primary, general surgery, urology and gastroenterology care. The first floor also contains Raymond Chiropractic. Chiropractor Christopher Raymond is also a co-owner.

The second floor of 5,000 square feet is unfinished and provides room for further growth.

“That has been in flux as to what we are going to do,” Shina said. “There is some really, really exciting stuff that we are in the planning process of that we definitely don’t have in Austintown.”

A ceremonial ribbon-cutting was held Tuesday. Raymond Chiropractic has been in the building since January 2020 and Shina’s practice since December 2020. Ground was broken in June 2019, but the project hit some delays with construction due to the pandemic, Shina said.

The facility allows patients to cut down on travel time for doctors’ visits, especially since Northside Medical Center on the North Side of Youngstown closed in 2018. Northside’s sister hospital, Trumbull Regional Medical Center in Warren, “has been wonderful” and is where patients go for procedures, “but sometimes, just to see a doctor, you may not want to go all the way up there,” Shina said.

“To be able to see a patient in the office here and have them walk 20 steps to see Dr. (Meredythe) McNally, per se, for their gastrointestinal issues, it’s better than having them drive 25 miles someplace else they may not want to go,” Shina said.

Canfield native Dr. Anthony Russo is a primary care physician at the facility. He returned to the area after earning his medical degree from the Avalon University School of Medicine in Curacao, an island in the Caribbean Sea.

“I’ve been blessed, I’d say. (It’s) very humbling, being local from Canfield, being able to go away for medical school, but come back … I was able to stay local and practice local, so it’s kind of a full circle. I feel fortunate that I can take care of my own people who grew up in the same community that I did,” Russo said.