Range Resources gives Mon Valley Hospital $50K for ER upgrades

Scott Beveridge
Observer Reporter

Mon Valley Hospital will perform $75,000 in improvements to standardize the rooms in its emergency department.

The project was boosted Tuesday with a $50,000 donation from Southpointe-based Range Resources, money that will also be spent to improve patient and visitor safety in the department’s 24 rooms, the company and hospital said.

“This is a community that cares a lot about its neighbors,” said Matt Pitzarella, spokesman for Range Resources, the Marcellus Shale natural gas drilling company.

“It’s a benefit for everyone in the community to have modern emergency care,” said Pitzarella, whose company’s operations have been moving closer to the Mon Valley.

Lou Panza, the hospital’s president and chief executive officer, said more than 400,000 patients have received emergency care at the Carroll Township facility since its emergency department was last renovated in 2005.

“The suites are flipped eight times a day,” Panza said. “It’s nonstop.”

He said the hospital is awaiting state Health Department approval of the plans before the work begins this summer and is completed by the end of the year.

The hospital will work from room to room repairing damages, installing televisions, phones and placing medical equipment in the same places in each one so the staff doesn’t have to look for it.

Each room also will receive new computer stations, furniture and privacy curtains.

Panza said the hospital will soon announce some of the security changes while some of them will not be disclosed in order for them to work.