WARREN — Private rooms for inpatient stays lessen the risk of spread of infection, reduce stress during recovery and afford patients perhaps what they need most — focused care and rest during convalescence.

“When you’re in a good mental state, your recovery is definitely better than the stress of hearing another patient talking, another family talking,” Linda Heater, regional chief nursing officer for Ohio and Pennsylvania for Steward Health Care, said.

The eighth floor at Trumbull Regional Medical Center before COVID-19 struck was remade into single-patient private rooms for recovery of mostly orthopedic surgeries. The floor, however, was closed when the hospital, like others across the U.S., stopped elective surgeries out of caution and to reallocate resources to combat the pandemic.

And it remained closed because of low staffing levels, but no longer.

On Thursday, hospital leadership, physicians and others officially celebrated the reopening of the floor that started having patients again within the past two weeks.

“We are so fortunate now that we are staffed and in a position to be able to offer to patients to come to this floor, and have our nurses have assignments that are reasonable for them and for the patient so they can give the patient focused attention,” Cindy Russo, president, Trumbull Regional Medical Center.

Then, with a snip of an oversized pair of scissors, the floor formally was reopened.

Ten rooms have reopened and when staffing allows for it, additional rooms will come online, Russo said.

“What we wanted to do is, let’s open the 10 beds, see how it goes — and it’s been phenomenal, and let’s go back to the plan,” Russo said about the future timing of when more rooms could come online.

Heater said a smaller patient-to-provider ratio allows for more attention, plus makes it easier for staff to care for patients, a benefit that goes a ways toward employee retention.

“Ratios are better controlled because we have a less number of patients to care for. The decrease in infections, the patient experience, and those are all the highest priorities for us as an organization, as well as the staff retention, so that move to private rooms was a no-brainer for us once we established the staffing,” Heater said.

Russo also reaffirmed the commitment of Trumbull Regional Medical Center and Steward to Warren.

“Trumbull (the hospital) is so privileged to be able to take care of the citizens of the greater Trumbull County area, but in particular, Trumbull is here to stay in Warren,” Russo said.

That, along with the the reopening of the private floor, was welcome news for Guy Coviello, president / CEO of the Youngstown / Warren Regional Chamber.

“One of our No. 1 priorities in this community is to grow the population to take the jobs we are creating, and we hear constantly from young talent that one of the criteria they look for is quality of health care of the community, so hearing this announcement today helps us to do our job a lot better,” Coviello said.

The hospital also showed off a bit its new state-of-the-art dialysis equipment that’s already in use. According to the hospital, it’s the first in the Mahoning Valley to use new Tablo equipment from Outset Medical that uses wireless transfer technology for monitoring and reporting. The new equipment should cut down time managing the equipment, giving staff more time with patients.