St. Luke’s Weight Management Program Comes to Monroe County

St. Luke’s is bringing its highly successful Weight Management program to Monroe County to meet the intense demand for these services among area residents. The new office, St. Luke’s Weight Management Monroe, will open by mid-spring at 1581 N. 9th St. in Stroudsburg.

“Currently, we have a very well established accredited weight management center at St. Luke’s Allentown and have noted a great demand from patients in the region surrounding the St. Luke’s Monroe Campus,” says T. Javier Birriel, MD, a board certified and fellowship trained laparoscopic and bariatric surgeon at the St. Luke’s Weight Management Center, and an Associate Program Director for the bariatric surgery fellowship at St. Luke’s.

“Many of the patients are traveling to our center in Allentown for medical and surgical weight loss options to take back their health. Given this, we wanted to expand our program to this area to not only meet the demand, but also to make it more accessible and convenient for patients in Monroe County.”

Dr. Birriel explains that the St. Luke’s Weight Management program consists of a multi-disciplinary team of surgeons, nurses, dietitians, social workers and coordinators.

“We provide constant guidance and support for our patients every step of the way,” he notes. “We are also the only program in the region with all fellowship trained bariatric surgeons. This means that my partners and I all have additional training in this specialty area.”

The metabolic and bariatric surgical options that will be offered include sleeve gastrectomy and gastric bypass.

“We will also be offering foregut surgery such as hiatal hernia repair, surgery for gastroesophageal reflux disease [GERD], and for achalasia,” Dr. Birriel says. “All of these options are minimally invasive surgeries, meaning they are performed laparoscopically.”

In the future, the St. Luke’s Weight Management Program in Monroe County plans to expand its medical weight loss program to St. Luke’s Monroe Campus. This will encompass the same multi-disciplinary team as well as a medical weight loss specialist or bariatrician.

“Expanding our program to this area will create a more convenient location for the residents of Monroe County and surrounding areas to improve their health,” he says. “Our metabolic and bariatric surgeries will not just lead to successful weight loss, but will help to treat and/or cure many of the diseases and conditions associated with obesity. These include high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol, obstructive sleep apnea, osteoarthritis, infertility due to polycystic ovarian syndrome, fatty liver disease, and much more.”

For more information or to make an appointment, call 484-426-2600. Patients and potential patients can also visit weightloss.sluhn.org for information.

Media Contact:

Sam Kennedy, Corporate Communications Director, 484-526-4134, samuel.kennedy@sluhn.org

About St. Luke’s

Founded in 1872, St. Luke’s University Health Network is a fully integrated, regional, non-profit network of 14,000 employees providing services at 10 hospitals and over 315 outpatient sites.  With annual net revenue of $1.9 billion, the network’s service area includes 10 counties: Lehigh, Northampton, Carbon, Schuylkill, Bucks, Montgomery, Berks and Monroe 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 network in central-eastern Pennsylvania to earn Medicare’s five-star rating (the highest) for quality, efficiency and patient satisfaction.  Repeatedly, including 2018, St. Luke’s has earned the 100 Top Major Teaching Hospital and 50 Top Cardiovascular Program designations from IBM Watson Health (formerly Truven Health Analytics).  St. Luke’s, utilizing the EPIC electronic medical record (EMR) system, is a multi-year recipient of the Most Wired award recognizing the breadth of St. Luke’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.