LVHN held a ribbon-cutting Monday for its new LVH-Carbon hospital in Lehighton.
Lehigh Valley Health Network cut the ribbon at another new hospital Monday.
After less than two years of construction, the 100,587-square-foot Lehigh Valley Hospital-Carbon campus is complete. LVHN anticipates the hospital will open this week, once it receives final approval from the state, spokesperson Jamie Stover said.
The full-service community hospital on Blakeslee Drive in Lehighton has a 16-bed emergency room, helipad and a health center for specialty services, an LVHN news release states. Many of the attending doctors in its ER will be from LVH–Cedar Crest’s Trauma Center.
The hospital also has 20 inpatient rooms equipped with telehealth technology so specialists can provide virtual care if needed.
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Numerous specialties will be covered at the new hospital, including:
LVH-Carbon’s health center will house Lehigh Valley Physician Group, which offers obstetrics and gynecology, ENT, gastrointestinal, urology, orthopedics, spine, neurology, pulmonology and general surgery.
“We listened to the community,” Terrence J. Purcell, president of LVHN northwest region, said during the ribbon-cutting event. “Our response is what you see here, today — a beautiful new hospital and health center, and the opportunity for even more programs and services to come.”
Mostly rural Carbon County had been trapped in a health care desert for some time but LVH-Carbon is the second hospital to be finished in less than a year in modestly populated Lehighton, which has 5,278 residents in 2021, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. St. Luke’s University Health Network opened its Carbon campus hospital in Lehighton in November.
The celebration of LVH-Carbon’s completion comes just a few weeks after LVHN opened LVH-Dickson City in Lackawanna County. LVHN has plans for more hospitals, including a small hospital in Lower Macungie Township.