Awards & Recognition

• St. Luke’s state-of-the-art birthing units offer parents the comforts of a safe, family-centered atmosphere to welcome their new babies into the world
• St. Luke’s is a leader in perinatal care, high-risk deliveries and breast feeding education
• St. Luke’s Level III and Level II Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICUs) provide advanced care to critically ill newborns and premature babies

The Blue Distinction Centers (BDC) designation signifies that your facility’s maternity program met nationally established criteria by demonstrating expertise in delivering quality specialty care, safely and effectively. Those facilities designated as Blue Distinction Centers+ (BDC+) also demonstrated both expertise and cost efficiency in delivering specialty care.

The award-winning hospitals demonstrate top performance on patients care, through clinical measures, and how efficiently the hospital performs, through operational measures. This award identifies the nation’s best providers for inpatient hospital care selected from more than 3,100 US hospitals. The 100 Top Hospitals achieve the following:

• Significantly higher survival
• Fewer complications
• Lower hospital readmissions
• Lower hospital length of stay
• Greater patient satisfaction
• Lower cost of care

St. Luke’s is a 8-time recipient of this prestigious award, and has received this award six years in a row.

St. Luke’s was also named one of the 15 Top Major Teaching Hospitals in the nation.

St. Luke’s is the ONLY hospital in the region to win this award. The only one. In fact, no other hospital in the region has EVER been recognized by Watson Health.

IBM Watson Health™, formerly Truven Health Analytics®, is a multinational Health Care company that delivers unbiased information, analytic tools, benchmarks, research and services to the health care industry.

St. Luke’s University Health Network’s Allentown and Bethlehem campuses have received Women’s Choice Awards^® for being among America’s Best Hospitals for Obstetrics. This evidence-based designation is the only award that identifies the country’s best healthcare institutions based on robust criteria that consider female patient satisfaction, clinical excellence, and what women say they want from a hospital.

The list of over 400 award winners, including St. Luke’s, represents hospitals that offer exceptional obstetric services which ranked above the national average for patient safety, thereby supporting a woman’s decision when choosing the best for her maternity needs.

March of Dimes Announces St. Luke’s as the First National NICU Site of the Year for 2015

• Recognizes the breadth and depth of work done by a NICU Family Support program in five key areas: high quality and innovative services to families, strong collaboration with the hospital partner, local and national promotion of the program, integration of families and volunteers throughout the program, and demonstrating program impact
• St. Luke’s Level III NICU (the highest level of NICU care offered in the Lehigh Valley region) is located in St. Luke’s University Hospital – Bethlehem, and St. Luke’s Allentown Campus offers a Level II NICU
• St. Luke’s Neonatologist Dr. Kimberly Costello recognized as "Doctor of the Year" by March of Dimes for 2015
• St. Luke’s NICU nurse Karen Metzger recognized as " Nurse of the Year" by March of Dimes for 2015

• Prestigious award honors one person annually who contributes to the development and surgical advancement of urogynecology and who further advances the knowledge and teaching of gynecologic surgery through ongoing AUGS educational programs
• Nationally-renowned urogynecologist Vincent Lucente, MD, FACS received 2015 honor for his contributions to the advancement of urogynecologic surgery.

• Demonstrates that the EMS agency has additional pediatric-specific medical equipment on their ambulances
• One of 12 ambulance services in the Eastern PA EMS Council region and one of four in the Bucks County EHS Region to be recognized under this program.