Mahoning Valley - Steward Health Care has put all of its 31 hospitals across the U.S. up for sale - including Sharon Regional, Trumbull Memorial and Hillside Rehabilitation hospitals in the Mahoning valley. 

Some buyers may be interested if they see potential to turn things around. 

“They say ‘okay I can identify some of the challenges that they're having. We need to upgrade potentially the technology systems that they have. We need to put some investment into this particular hospital,’” Laura Dyrda, the Vice President & Editor in Chief of Becker's Healthcare said. 

The three hospitals are worth a combined value of $116 million, according to Medical Properties Trust.

Talks about selling the Sharon hospital have been ongoing even before Steward filed for bankruptcy. Rod Wilt, a member of the Sharon Regional Medical Center Board of Directors said he’s been in touch with at least three local potential buyers. He added that there could be more potential buyers - even ones from out of state. 

21 News reached out to University Hospitals, Cleveland Clinic, UPMC and Southwoods to see if they may have any interest, but none have gotten back to us so far. 

Dyrda said local systems that continue to buy up hospitals in their areas have faced scrutiny from the federal government, saying they are hindering competition in the market. However, those local systems may be interested in keeping the next closest hospital open for their own benefit. 

“Making sure their own large institutions don't have patient backup or too much patient volume coming into them,” Dyrda said. 

But Dyrda added that it's possible someone out of state could buy the hospitals since health systems have been more aggressive with expanding to new states in the past year. 

Wilt said they are “deeply committed” to keeping the Sharon hospital open for patients and are hoping that they can seal the deal with a local non profit. 

Steward has an auction scheduled at the end of June to try and recoup some money after filing for bankruptcy.