St. Luke's University Health Network on Friday opened the new St. Luke's Heart Hospital at St. Luke's Anderson Campus.
A ribbon cutting ceremony at the Bethlehem Township facility was attended by roughly 200 people. Among the speakers at the event was St. Luke’s President & CEO Rick Anderson, who noted the significance of opening the Heart Hospital during United States’ 250th anniversary year.
“The new St. Luke’s Heart Hospital stands as an essential expression of what American ingenuity, innovation and determination can achieve,” Anderson said. “Like every hospital built by St. Luke’s, it was constructed with American steel with an unwavering commitment to excellence. Combining world-class technology, leading-edge design and the expertise of our exceptional clinicians, this facility reflects St. Luke's and our nation’s proud tradition of pioneering advances in health care. Most importantly, it ensures that patients throughout our region have access to some of the finest cardiovascular care available anywhere in the world, right here in the Lehigh Valley.”
The $252 million Heart Hospital is the largest construction project in St. Luke's more than 150-year history, both in dollar figure and square footage.
The five-story, approximately 355,000-square-foot facility is seamlessly integrated into St. Luke’s Anderson Campus. A central corridor on each of the upper floors stretches 330 feet — roughly the length of a football field.
Construction began in 2024 and has employed over a thousand skilled workers. Once fully operational, the Heart Hospital will support hundreds of permanent, family-sustaining healthcare jobs.
The new facility will provide patients with convenient access to the full spectrum of St. Luke's nationally recognized cardiovascular services, including four dedicated heart operating rooms, one hybrid operating room, ten advanced interventional suites for cardiac catheterization, electrophysiology and interventional radiology, in addition to a specially designed cardiac intensive care unit providing high-acuity heart patients advanced specialized care.
“This Heart Hospital represents one of the most significant investments in cardiovascular care our region has ever seen,” said Raymond Durkin, MD, St. Luke’s Cardiovascular Services Chairman. “When I look at this building, I don’t just see a hospital. I see lives that will be saved, families that will have more time together and a commitment to delivering world-class cardiovascular services close to home for generations to come.”
Additionally, the Heart Hospital will be fully equipped with the latest, most innovative equipment and technologies to best treat our cardiac patients. This includes state-of-the-art imaging equipment to visualize and assess the most intricate heart issues, heart-lung machines to pump blood during open-heart surgeries and extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) machines to provide patients with continuous, long term cardiopulmonary support.
The Heart Hospital will also serve as a Siemens international show site for cardiac imaging and will attract physicians and other health care leaders from around the globe to experience the highest standard of cardiovascular care in action.
Despite its size and complexity, the project was completed at a relatively low per-square-foot cost by industry standards, a testament to St. Luke's extensive experience in hospital construction. In recent years, St. Luke's has built five full-service acute care hospitals — more than any other health system in Pennsylvania.
Designed to support learning and innovation, the Heart Hospital furthers St. Luke's educational mission through expanded teaching space including a new cardiac fellowship program. It also incorporates numerous design innovations improving efficiency and enhancing patients' experience.
The facility also includes features that will improve flow and otherwise benefit the broader Anderson Campus, including a new and larger cafeteria and a rooftop helipad. The helipad will facilitate the rapid transport of patients to the campus trauma center, which this month earned the highest-level trauma accreditation reserved for the most advanced trauma centers.
“The new Heart Hospital is a transformative investment in the future of health care for our region, nearly doubling the number of in-patient beds at the Anderson Campus to meet a growing demand for St. Luke’s high-quality services,” said Ed Nawrocki, president of St. Luke’s East Region and the Anderson Campus. “For 15 years, Anderson Campus has grown alongside the communities we serve, expanding access to advanced, high-quality care. The Heart Hospital builds on that legacy by bringing world-class cardiovascular expertise, state-of-the-art technology and an exceptional patient experience together under one roof. It reinforces what our patients already know: They can receive the most advanced heart care available anywhere, right here close to home.”
Located on a 500-acre campus overlooking the Lehigh River, St. Luke's Anderson Campus opened 15 years ago as Pennsylvania's first new full-service acute-care hospital in four decades.
Since then, the campus has continued to expand to meet the region's healthcare needs. The original campus included a state-of-the-art cancer center and medical office building. In 2017, the addition of a $26 million Specialty Pavilion added new specialty services and an Ambulatory Surgery Center. In 2020, the $90 million Women & Babies Pavilion opened, introducing labor and delivery services, a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), graduate medical education space and a simulation teaching center, doubling the size of the existing hospital.
With its additional 140 beds, the Heart Hospital nearly doubles the Anderson Campus’ inpatient capacity.
The Anderson Campus is also home to the St. Luke's Rodale Institute Organic Farm, which supplies fresh produce to St. Luke's hospitals, and an extensive network of popular walking trails. During the summer and fall, the campus's iconic sunflower and cosmos fields attract thousands of visitors from across the region.
