By HFT Staff

Lehigh Valley Health Network (LVHN), part of Jefferson Health, expects to open its fourth neighborhood hospital in Hellertown, Pennsylvania, next year. 

The project is a three-story, 90,000-square-foot building, with the hospital occupying the first floor and medical offices on the two upper floors. LVHN is partnering with Peron Development and J.G. Petrucci Company to build the facility. 

Neighborhood hospitals are licensed and accredited acute care facilities, with a full-service emergency room. They are open 24 hours a day, year-round. This hospital, like its counterparts in Macungie, Gilbertsville and Tannersville (under construction), will feature 11 ER beds and 10 inpatient beds for those requiring overnight stays or additional monitoring and testing. Anyone requiring more acute care can be stabilized and taken to a nearby larger LVHN hospital with increased capability. 

About 80 percent of hospital ER patients are treated and released the same day, making neighborhood hospitals a great fit and a way to reduce ER pressure on larger LVHN hospitals. 

The first floor of the Hellertown facility will feature the hospital, imaging and HNL Lab Medicine. The upper floors will include family medicine, a sleep center, adult and pediatric rehabilitation, and cardiac rehabilitation. 

LVHN’s last hospital opening in Northampton County was LVH–Hecktown Oaks in Lower Nazareth Township in July 2021. Located near Route 33, LVH–Hecktown Oaks is a larger hospital and was the first new hospital built by LVHN in 50 years. It was built in response to demand for LVHN care in the county. 

The hospital property was used for spark plug manufacturing for 40 years until the mid-1970s and was later listed as a federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Superfund site because of contamination from manufacturing wastes that were disposed of in an unlined lagoon. 

Under EPA supervision, a waterproof cover was completed over the lagoon in 1994, followed by the installation of groundwater monitoring and treatment systems. The EPA decided in 2014 that no further action was needed on the site. Hospital construction will not disturb the capped lagoon area.