The significant growth of health care in the region
continues to rise, and, with it, so does the construction of new facilities to
meet the demand for services.
This growth is driven by several factors, including a
burgeoning population, increasing numbers of aging baby boomers, a stronger
preference for private patient rooms, and rapid advancements in medical
technology.
Across the Greater Lehigh Valley, numerous health care sites
have cropped up over the past year, and, with many expansions recently
complete, more are on the way.
An update on some of the expansions and renovations
includes:
SMALLER CENTERS, BIG
GROWTH
Patient First, a provider of urgent and primary care
services, opened three locations in the Greater Lehigh Valley in February,
including one in Hanover Township, Northampton County, another in Wilson
Borough and a third in Pottstown. Two years ago, Patient First opened a site in
a shopping center on Tilghman Street in Allentown.
“A lot of our facilities have similar footprints,” said Ian
Slinkman, director of marketing for Patient First. “The Allentown location is
an end cap in a strip mall.”
Typically, facilities are about 7,000 square feet with 12
treatment rooms, he said.
Patient First has been in business for more than 30 years,
Slinkman said. Locations are staffed with physicians and offer on-site labs,
prescription drugs and primary care services, in addition to emergency care.
“We can see a significant proportion of hospital visitors,”
he said.
NEW LOCATIONS FOR
LVHN
Lehigh Valley Health Network is embarking on several
projects that will expand its presence in the region. Serfass Construction will
build a health center for LVHN at Fogelsville next to the Weis Markets near
Route 100.
Services will include laboratory services through health
network labs, primary care, obstetrics, pediatrics, ExpressCare,
rehabilitation, X-ray and ultrasound. An opening is anticipated in spring, said
Brian Downs, spokesman for LVHN.
Also, LVHN will move Health Network Labs from 2024 Lehigh
St. in Allentown to what was a vacant property at 794 Roble Road in Hanover
Township, Lehigh County.
“They plan to move in late 2014 and be operational at the
new location in early 2015,” Downs said. “About 400 people will be moving from
2024 to the new building, which is about 102,000 square feet, about twice the
size of the Lehigh Street location.”
The new building will house HNL’s main laboratory testing
facility and administrative offices.
LVHN’s Advanced Intensive Care Unit and some of the health
network’s nonclinical services will remain at 2024 Lehigh St. LVHN is assessing
the building to refit it for other nonclinical services, Downs said.
RAMPING UP IN READING
At Reading Health System, a major project is underway to
expand its hospital facility, which includes replacement of perioperative rooms
and the addition of a five-and-a-half-story patient tower, according to Mark
McNash, vice president of support services for Reading Health System.
The Seventh Avenue project, as it is known, includes the
construction of five patient units with 30 private rooms in each unit. Reading
Health System broke ground last September and plans to take occupancy of the
operating rooms in late summer next year and occupy the new patient rooms by
2017, McNash said.
This project also involves building 24 operating rooms. Six
will be hybrid operating rooms, described by McNash as rooms that can be easily
transformed to provide different operating procedures – while keeping the
patient in the room.
“It’s new technology that’s come about more so in the
cardiology area,” he said.
As an example, if a patient immediately needs open heart
surgery, rather than transporting the person to another room, the patient can
be treated in the same space.
The project is on the last remaining greenspace on the
system’s home at Seventh Avenue and Parkside Drive.
McNash said the market appears to be demanding more private
patient rooms in hospitals, particularly since it aids in the healing process
and helps prevent infection.
“We will be working to increase our percent of private
rooms; right now we are at approximately 35 percent …,” he said.
“The Seventh Street project is really coming about because
of the demand for technology in the perioperative environment,” McNash said.
“Today’s technology, with all the equipment, the rooms of the old cannot
accommodate all the equipment.”
New rooms call for sizes between 600 and 650 square feet, he
added.
“It’s also going to give us the ability to increase our
emergency room capacity,” McNash said.
THE CASE FOR MORE
SPACE
At its main campus at Fourth and Chew streets in Allentown,
Sacred Heart Hospital has been deeply involved in construction to modernize and
upgrade its facility.
“For us, it’s been a busy year in terms of construction,”
said John Nespoli, president and CEO of Sacred Heart.
Sacred Heart Hospital in Allentown is completing Five Tower,
a floor that will open in December in the hospital’s medical/surgical tower.
This project involves creating a family type atmosphere for
the modern, private in-patient rooms known as the planetree model, Nespoli
said.
“I think people are really seeking privacy and modern
quarters,” he said.
Aside from physical construction and renovations, the
hospital is upgrading its power lines.
“We are also putting major dollars into upgrading the
infrastructure of the main tower,” Nespoli said.
It is the fourth floor to be modernized, and the hospital
seeks to complete the remaining four floors in the next couple of years.
Sacred Heart recently bought 451 Chew St., a building
attached to the main campus, and recruited about 25 new physicians for the
space, Nespoli said.
The hospital built a new primary care suite, and Nespoli
said the demand for medical office space is growing. There are about 150,000
square feet of office space on campus at an occupancy rate of 90 percent, up
from about 50 percent a few years ago.
Across from Fourth and Chew streets is a 20,000-square-foot
building Sacred Heart is renovating so it can move 70 hospice and home care
workers into the space.
Outside the city, Sacred Heart has a presence at Walbert
Avenue and Cedar Crest Boulevard in South Whitehall Township at a recently
built primary care facility.
Additionally, Nespoli said, Sacred Heart has a significant
primary care campus at Northampton and office space in Coopersburg.
Sacred Heart recently installed electronic technology in all
of its office buildings and health care facilities and upgraded its central
processing centers.
“We are growing out of our space and we anticipate we will
need additional capacity within the next couple of years,” Nespoli said.
It has 1,300 employees and, at its main campus, total
outpatient visits at nearly 200,000.
Sacred Heart is looking at additional usage, which could
include commercial, residential, educational or health care on a parcel in
front of the hospital.
The hospital also wants to build a senior housing center on
campus.
“We intend to put a geriatric outpatient center within the
senior housing,” Nespoli said.
SEEKING ONE-STOP
SERVICE
St. Luke’s University Health Network has been building
larger medical centers over the past year, said Ray Midlam, vice president of
business development and planning for St. Luke’s. One of its newest projects is
St. Luke’s West End Medical Center in South Whitehall Township, which includes
a sports and human performance center.
The project is being completed in several parts and includes
urgent care and expanded offices in the 108,000-square-foot building.
The center opened in July, and St. Luke’s is planning
another 20,000 to 30,000 square feet of development at the site.
At West End Medical Center, St. Luke’s recently started
building an orthopedic suite. Pain management recently went in and it already
has a radiology department. Next, it will add physical therapy. The orthopedic
suite will open by October, followed by the physical therapy unit.
“We are trying to coordinate the care into one single spot,”
said Denise Rader, director of media relations for St. Luke’s.
St. Luke’s recently finished its Wind Gap Medical Center,
while St. Luke’s Care Now, an urgent care center in Wind Gap, opened in March.
The network continues to develop the Anderson Campus in
Bethlehem Township, having recently added an extra floor to the hospital and
doubling the size of its emergency department.
In Phillipsburg, near its Warren Hospital location, St.
Luke’s is reclaiming space in a shopping center. It seeks to add orthopedics
and physical therapy in that location, now called St. Luke’s Warren Hospital
Hillcrest Plaza, Midlam said.
“Hopefully by the end of this year, early next year, we will
start seeing patients there,” he said.
The overall goal is to build the plaza into a multiuse
medical center, Rader said.
“They are more efficient for us to run,” Rader said. “When
we have a lot of services located in one area, hopefully to try to have
one-stop shopping. We can offer a lot more services than we would 10 years
ago.”
A growing business unit for St. Luke’s is the health and
fitness centers that it would like to have in all of its hospitals, and it is
looking to establish a stronger focus on sports performance.
Source: LVB.com
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