T-L Photo/JENNIFER COMPSTON-STROUGH St. Clairsville resident Sherry Definbaugh, left, introduces herself to Dwayne Richardson, president of Trinity Health System’s St. Clairsville Neighborhood Hospital, which is scheduled to open this month. Trinity held an informal event at Undo’s West on Monday to get better acquainted with community members.

ST. CLAIRSVILLE — Community members welcomed Trinity Health System with open arms on Monday during an event the company hosted to help them get better acquainted with its new hospital and the services it will provide when it opens later this month.

“We’re here to talk about the excitement we have for opening the new hospital,” Laurie Labishak, director of marketing and communications for Trinity said as the event kicked off at Undo’s West. “We want people to meet our leadership. We want to hear about their expectations and learn how we can serve them better.”

The event took the form of a meet-and-greet mixer with no formal program. Attendees were invited to mingle, chat and enjoy some of Undo’s famous food.

“We believe in breaking bread together,” Labishak added. “That’s how we come together as a community.”

Trinity broke ground on the project two years ago, in July 2023. Despite a few setbacks, including wet weather and an incident of vandalism, construction stayed on schedule.

A ribbon cutting and blessing of the facility are now scheduled for 10 a.m. July 18. Dwayne Richardson, president of the new hospital, said the facility will open to patients at 8 a.m. July 21.

Among the community members present on Monday was Sherry Defibaugh, who said she lives close to the new hospital. She talked with Richardson about how reassuring it is to know health care will be available right in her own neighborhood.

The 20,000-square-foot acute care service hospital is a two-story building with 10 emergency rooms, two of which will be trauma rooms along with three fast track rooms on the second floor, six inpatient rooms including one intensive care room and two operating rooms. The hospital will also have other departments found in hospitals from laboratory services to high-end imaging services.

The hospital will have a room geared toward bariatric patients and another room dedicated to behavioral health patients within an emergency room. Richardson said these are services the community doesn’t have access to right now.

Richardson added that many services that won’t be available on site will be accessed via other methods, such as telehealth.

Richardson said Trinity made the decision to build the new hospital when it saw the healthcare void left in the Belmont County area when East Ohio Regional Hospital in Martins Ferry and Ohio Valley Medical Center in Wheeling were closed by then-owner Alecto Healthcare Services in 2019. EORH was purchased and reopened by Dr. John Johnson in 2020, but it closed again this past March.

Last week, it was announced that 360 Healthcare Inc. purchased EORH and that company President Harold Ramsey has launched efforts to reopen it in the fall.