St. Luke's eyeing new home for Quakertown campus

More than four years after acquiring 30 acres of land a couple of miles from its current location, St. Luke’s Quakertown Hospital is embarking on a two-phase plan for bringing outpatient and inpatient services to the Upper Bucks County site.

John Sylvia, president of St. Luke’s Quakertown, said they are in the process of developing a plan that will call for initially providing outpatient care services at the site.

The long-term idea, he said, is to use the land at Route 663 and Portzer Road in Milford, Pa., as the site for a replacement hospital. Sylvia said building the replacement would depend on community need growing and the health system being able to secure regulatory approvals for such a project.

“We are very landlocked here at our Park Avenue location,” he said. “We have limited parking. We have to have our employees park off site and we bus them in.”

Sylvia said the hospital, part of the Bethlehem-based St. Luke’s University Health Network, hopes to have a master plan for Milford property prepared by the end of the year.

St. Luke's bought the Milford property in early 2011 from LifeQuest, a nonprofit health services organization, with the idea the land would allow the Quakertown campus to expand, and possibly relocate, in Upper Bucks County.

“Right now we are in a very active analysis phase looking at what the needs of the community are and what the needs of the hospital are,” he said. “The master plan for the site will include outpatient and inpatient services, with phase I being outpatient services. Long term, we are looking to move the campus there, but it’s too early to say that’s a definitive decision.”

Sylvia said the analysis includes looking at what services should be moved to the Milford site from Quakertown, and what new services they could add that the hospital — which opened in 1930 — is not currently providing.

He said at this time he could not estimate what the project will cost. “I could give you a range, but it would be so broad it would be meaningless,” he said.

Sylvia said his expectation is the first-phase of the project would include construction of a medical complex that would have space for physician offices, diagnostic services and clinical procedures.

St. Luke’s is currently building an $80 million replacement hospital for its Monroe campus in Bartonsville. Pa. The 180,000-square foot hospital is expected to open next year.

The health system opened a $175 million replacement hospital for its Anderson campus in Bethlehem in late 2011.

Source: Philadelphia Business Journal