News

 July 12, 2018 – St. Luke’s University Health Network (SLUHN) and Geisinger officially broke ground Thursday on a new acute care hospital near Orwigsburg in southern Schuylkill County. 

Featured speakers at the event included:

• Gabe Kamarousky, President, Geisinger St. Luke’s Hospital
• Lynn Miller, MBA, Executive Vice President, Clinical Operations, Geisinger
• David T. Feinberg, MD, President and CEO, Geisinger
• Jerry Knowles, State Representative, 124th Legislative District
• Bob Martin, Senior Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer, St. Luke’s University Health Network

The new Geisinger St. Luke’s Hospital – built with American steel – will be a fully-licensed, 80-bed hospital with an emergency department and a full range of specialties and services.

The three-story, 120,000-square-foot facility will be located on Paramount Boulevard off Route 61 in West Brunswick Township near Orwigsburg. It is expected to be completed and open in the fourth quarter of 2019.

“Geisinger’s commitment to caring means providing compassionate, comprehensive health care to our patients close to home,” said David T. Feinberg, MD, MBA, Geisinger President and CEO. “We know that many patients are leaving Schuylkill and Berks counties for hospital services.  Our growing partnership with St. Luke’s will not only expand the range of health care services in that community but perhaps, more importantly, will offer greater convenience so that patients, including many of our Geisinger Health Plan members, will receive the care they need right where they live.”

This is the first time in Pennsylvania that two health care systems have agreed to build and equally co-own a new hospital.

Under terms of the agreement, the new hospital will operate under SLUHN and Geisinger as a joint venture, with funding and governance shared equally between the two non-profit health systems. Bethlehem, Pa.-based St. Luke’s will build and manage the hospital. SLUHN and Geisinger, headquartered in Danville, Pa., will both contribute physicians and specialty support staff and expertise.

“A new hospital hasn’t been built in Schuylkill County in nearly a century,” Geisinger St. Luke’s Hospital President Gabe Kamarousky said. “The finished product will emphasize the strengths of Geisinger and St. Luke’s providing the best value in health care – the highest quality at the lowest cost – to residents of Schuylkill County and nearby Berks County.”

The two systems enjoy a history of collaboration, including an insurance partnership. Also as of July 1, Geisinger's Life Flight manages St. Luke’s emergency medical air transportation.

Additionally, both organizations have provided services to Schuylkill, Berks and Carbon county residents for years.

St. Luke’s currently (since 2000) has a hospital in Schuylkill County – St. Luke’s Miners Campus.  St. Luke’s Miners Campus, to which the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid (CMS) recently awarded its highest five-star rating, is a 44-bed acute care hospital with a Level IV trauma center and 48-bed skilled nursing facility, located in Coaldale.  In Hamburg, Berks County, which is south of Orwigsburg, there are a St. Luke’s Care Now walk-in center, a primary care office, a physical therapy office and a lab.  St. Luke’s Gnaden Huetten and Palmerton campuses, which recently joined SLUHN, are located in nearby Carbon County.

Geisinger Orwigsburg’s outpatient clinic on Hollywood Boulevard offers comprehensive primary care for adults and children, including chronic disease management, laboratory, pharmacy and X-ray services. Geisinger offers primary care and specialty services, including outpatient surgery and radiation oncology in Pottsville, as well as primary care offices in Frackville and Mahanoy City.

At its peak, construction of the Geisinger St. Luke’s Hospital will employ over 200 construction workers through dozens of contractors, injecting a powerful economic stimulus into the local economy. The hospital, upon completion, will sustain hundreds of permanent, family-supporting jobs.

The Geisinger St. Luke’s Hospital is one of numerous, major initiatives underway at St. Luke’s.  Already this year, the Network has merged with Blue Mountain Health System and Sacred Heart HealthCare System. In May, St. Luke’s broke ground on a new hospital in Quakertown. In June, it broke ground on a new Women and Babies Pavilion at the St. Luke’s Anderson Campus in Bethlehem Township. Amid these major developments, St. Luke’s has been designated an IBM Watson Health (formerly Truven) 100 Top Hospital in the major teaching hospital category for a sixth time and the fourth year in a row.

Media Contacts

Geisinger: Marc Stempka, mstempka@geisinger.edu, 570-214-3091

St. Luke's: Sam Kennedy, samuel.kennedy@sluhn.org, 484-526-4134

About St. Luke’s

Founded in 1872, St. Luke’s University Health Network (SLUHN) is a fully integrated, regional, non-profit network of 14,000 employees providing services at 10 hospitals and over 300 outpatient sites.  With annual net revenue of $1.9 billion, the Network’s service area includes 10 counties: Lehigh, Northampton, Berks, Bucks, Carbon, Montgomery, Monroe and Schuylkill counties in Pennsylvania and Warren and Hunterdon counties in New Jersey.  Dedicated to advancing medical education, St. Luke’s is the preeminent teaching hospital in central-eastern Pennsylvania.  In partnership with Temple University, St. Luke’s created the region’s first and only regional medical school campus.  It also operates the nation’s longest continuously operating School of Nursing, established in 1884, and 28 fully accredited graduate medical educational programs with 226 residents and fellows.  St. Luke’s is the only health care system in central-eastern Pennsylvania to earn Medicare’s five-star rating (the highest) for quality, efficiency and patient satisfaction.  St. Luke’s has earned the 100 Top Major Teaching Hospital designation from IBM Watson Health (formerly Truven Health Analytics) repeatedly – six times total and four years in a row including 2018.  It has also been cited by IBM Watson Health as a 50 Top Cardiovascular Program.  Utilizing the EPIC electronic medical record (EMR) system for both inpatient and outpatient services, the Network is a multi-year recipient of the Most Wired award recognizing the breadth of the SLUHN’s information technology applications such as telehealth, online scheduling and online pricing information.  St. Luke’s is also recognized as one of the state’s lowest cost providers.

About Geisinger

Geisinger is an integrated health services organization widely recognized for its innovative use of the electronic health record and the development of innovative care delivery models such as ProvenHealth Navigator®, ProvenCare® and ProvenExperience®. As one of the nation’s largest health service organizations, Geisinger serves more than 3 million residents throughout 45 counties in central, south-central and northeast Pennsylvania, and also in southern New Jersey at AtlantiCare, a Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award recipient. In 2017, the Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine and Geisinger Jersey Shore Hospital became the newest members of the Geisinger Family. The physician-led system is comprised of approximately 30,000 employees, including nearly 1,600 employed physicians, 13 hospital campuses, two research centers, and a 583,000-member health plan, all of which leverage an estimated $12.7 billion positive impact on the Pennsylvania and New Jersey economies. Geisinger has repeatedly garnered national accolades for integration, quality and service. In addition to fulfilling its patient care mission, Geisinger has a long-standing commitment to medical education, research and community service. For more information, visit www.geisinger.org, or connect with us on Facebook>, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter