UPMC has edge over Forbes Regional east of Pittsburgh

In the battle of competing hospitals east of Pittsburgh, UPMC seems to have the edge over Forbes Hospital — at least when comparing numbers over five years provided by each of the health care centers.

Since opening July 3, 2012, UPMC has doubled its employee base, hired 50 more primary care physicians and acquired a 40,000-square-foot building on Oxford Drive. It is now looking to expand the emergency and surgical departments and a feasibility study is underway for another physician building.

On the care side, there have been 58,000 inpatient treatment and observation visits since 2012, 220,000 emergency department visits and surgeons performed a little more than 21,000 surgeries. In the 2017 fiscal year, inpatient and observation visits hit around 13,000, the emergency department had almost 49,000 visits, surgeons performed 4,600 surgeries and the hospital had 89,000 outpatients.

When the hospital opened five years ago, it had 156 beds, 600 physicians and 650 employees. Today, UPMC East has 800 physicians and 856 employees; the number of beds has remained the same.

Compared to five years ago, “our growth numbers look great,” hospital President Mark Sevco said days after celebrating the hospital's five-year anniversary recently.

“We just have more demand than we have space right now,” he said.

Forbes Hospital, which is located a mile down the road from UPMC East, suffered slightly from 2012 to 2017.

Although the Allegheny Health Network recently reported an operating income of $12.6 million for the six months that ended June 30, the hospital in Monroeville lost beds, employees, and emergency department visits are down compared to 2012 numbers.

However, Forbes President Dr. Mark Rubino said other services and departments at the hospital are growing.

“What happened with UPMC is they started in the middle of our journey,” Rubino said. “So we had already gone down our path of moving our services from basic community-type services to tertiary-type services.”

He said the hospital opened up a trauma center in October 2012, three months after its competitor opened its doors up the street. It has also developed chest pain and stroke centers since UPMC opened.

The hospital is in the works to construct a 13,000-square-foot addition on the eastern side of the hospital for perioperative services and a 1,400-square-foot addition on the western side for a stair tower. The project is estimated to cost $16 million, Rubino said.

Dillon Carr is a Tribune-Review staff writer. Reach him at 412-871-2325, dcarr@tribweb.com or via Twitter @dillonswriting.

Correction: Dr. Mark Rubino's name was misspelled in an earlier version of this story.