Akron, Ohio-based Summa Health System is getting ready to open its first major outpatient facility in the region’s fastest growing county.
Summa has teamed up with Medina County-area doctors to build a 100,000-square-foot outpatient center on state Route 18 in Medina County’s Medina and Montville townships. When it opens in mid-November, the Summa Health Center at Lake Medina will offer mammography, CT and MRI scans, ultrasound, neuro-diagnostic services, bone-density testing, lab services and physical and occupational therapy.
In addition, the center will house several primary-care and specialty physician offices, as well as a sleep lab and radiation and medical oncology services. Cancer patients who need radiation treatments now must travel to Brunswick, Akron or Cleveland, said Dr. John M. Surso, medical director and community liaison for the health center. ”This will allow them to, in our community, have state-of-the-art cancer care,” he said.

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The following month, a two-suite, same-day surgery center jointly owned by Summa and Medina-area surgeons will open. By the end of the year, Summa will begin construction on the center’s next phase, which will include a full-service satellite emergency department, physician offices and a community room. The second phase is expected to be done a year later.
”Practically speaking, all those things that are done in medicine on an outpatient basis will be done there,” Surso said. The center will serve patients primarily from Medina County and western Summit, southern Cuyahoga and northern Wayne counties, he said.
The cost of the project is about $17 million — $5.5 million for the first phase, $7.9 million in the second for equipment and capital and $3.6 million to acquire the 30-acre property. Construction costs were not available. Signet Enterprises LLC of Akron is developing the project and will own the facility. The center then will be leased under a long-term deal by Summa and the NorthEast Ohio Management Service Organization, a group of about 75 doctors from Medina and surrounding communities.
Medina County is attracting the attention of major health systems in Cleveland and Akron that are looking to draw patients from the growing area. Summa’s outpatient facility is about a mile away from Medina Hospital, which became part of the Cleveland Clinic’s network of regional community hospitals a year ago. Cleveland-based University Hospitals also has an outpatient campus in the area.

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Cheryl Powell is a health reporter for The Akron Beacon Journal, the daily newspaper in Akron and a syndication partner of MedCity News.
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