By Tim Bonfield
The Cincinnati Enquirer

COVINGTON - By 2006, the St. Elizabeth Medical Center North campus won't be a hospital anymore. But it won't be closing either.

A renovation project announced Monday will spend up to $5.5 million to convert an institution that has been part of Covington since 1861 into a center for emergency care, outpatient diagnostic testing and other services.

Plans to double the size of the north unit's emergency department, to remodel a laboratory and to lease part of the fourth floor to a long-term care agency would be completed in stages this year and in 2005.Then in 2006 - once a $61 million patient tower already under construction at the St. Elizabeth South campus in Edgewood is complete - all inpatient services in Covington would be moved to Edgewood.

Long term, the move transfers the rights to operate 193 beds in addition to the 362 beds already at St. Elizabeth South. That gives one of Greater Cincinnati's most successful hospitals room to grow, but administrators have not decided how many beds the Edgewood hospital will actually add, said spokeswoman Karla Webb.

As a full-service hospital, St. Elizabeth North has been dwindling for years. Its overnight patient count has dropped to about 32 a day. It closed its operating rooms about a year ago.

However, once renovations are complete, the Covington outpatient center expects up to 98,000 visits a year.

"For years, we have dealt with rumors that the North Unit would close," said Joe Gross, president and chief executive of St. Elizabeth. "While the demand for inpatient and surgical services has declined at the North over the years, the number of patients using St. E. North for emergency and outpatient services has steadily increased."

Hospital managers did not specify how many jobs will be moved to Edgewood, but did say none are expected to be eliminated. The North campus employs 744 people and the South campus employs 2,761, Webb said. Services that will continue in Covington include physician offices, cardiology, physical therapy, wound care, sleep disorders and kidney dialysis.

The Covington campus also will house several business functions, including patient accounts, headquarters for home health services and an expanded training facility.

Hospital closures

Monday's announcement that St. Elizabeth Medical Center's North Unit in Covington would stop providing inpatient care in 2006 would be the fifth area hospital to discontinue full services since 1993. The others:

Mercy Hospital Hamilton, 2001

Bethesda Oak Hospital (Avondale), 2000

Jewish Hospital (Avondale) 1997

Holmes Hospital (Corryville) (last 26 beds) 1993

Source: Enquirer research

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E-mail tbonfield@enquirer.com