St. Luke’s Miners Opens Rural Health Center in Lansford

St. Luke’s Miners’ rural health clinics are a national model, earning the 2018 Outstanding Rural Health Organization Award.

St. Luke’s University Health Network will host a ribbon cutting and community open house for its new Lansford Medical Office Building at 100 West Patterson Street, Lansford, on Wednesday, March 13 from 5-6:30 pm.

News media are invited to attend.

The St. Luke’s Lansford Medical Office Building, which opened to patients in February, is located at the site of the former Palace night club.

Brian Lentes, Acting Deputy Secretary of Health for the Pennsylvania Department of Health, is among the state and local officials expected to attend the open house. In addition to the official ribbon cutting, there will be tours of the building along with refreshments and a prize drawing for attendees.

Health care services include: a St. Luke’s rural health care center providing preventive health and family medicine services; and St. Luke’s Physical Therapy Center offering physical therapy (general, pediatric, lymphedema and vestibular), occupational therapy (strength, endurance and neuro) and speech therapy (pediatric, feeding and cognition). Other specialty health care services will be added in the future.

The new clinic is St. Luke’s fourth federally designated rural health clinic in Coal Country. The others are located in Nesquehoning, Tamaqua and Ringtown. These special clinics accept private insurances, medical assistance, Medicare and patients who are self-pay.

St. Luke’s Miners’ rural health clinics are a national model, earning the 2018 Outstanding Rural Health Organization Award from the National Rural Health Association. The award, which recognizes St. Luke’s commitment to expanding and improving access to health care in Carbon and Schuylkill counties, was presented in May at the NRHA’s Annual Rural Health Conference and Rural Hospital Innovation Summit in New Orleans, La.

The rural health clinics provide over 12,000 patient visits annually, delivering high-quality primary care and community outreach programs to underserved populations in the two-county region.  Among the innovative programs implemented by the Rural Health Clinics has been the Flinders Chronic Condition Management Program, an interventional initiative that has focused on improving the health of patients with diabetes and decreasing emergency department utilization among patients who had previously demonstrated unusually high rates of emergency department usage.

Additionally, out of the 93 rurally located family medicine residency programs in the United States, the St. Luke’s Family Medicine Residency Program at Miners is one of just 34 nationwide – and the only one in Pennsylvania – that are accredited as integrated rural training tracks. The goal is to develop a new generation of physicians to serve Coal Country and other rural areas facing doctor shortages.

St. Luke’s Miners itself, once a struggling hospital before joining St. Luke’s, has added dozens of specialty physicians over the past decade and now earns the highest ratings from the annual quality and safety hospital review conducted by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid.

About St. Luke’s

Founded in 1872, St. Luke’s University Health Network (SLUHN) is a fully integrated, regional, non-profit network of more than 15,000 employees providing services at 10 hospitals and more than 320 outpatient sites.  With annual net revenue greater than $2 billion, the Network’s service area includes 10 counties: Lehigh, Northampton, Berks, Bucks, Carbon, Montgomery, Monroe and Schuylkill 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 Lehigh Valley-based health care system with Medicare’s five- and four-star ratings (the highest) for quality, efficiency and patient satisfaction.  St. Luke’s is both a Leapfrog Group and Healthgrades Top Hospital.  In 2019, three of IBM Watson Health’s 100 Top Hospitals were St. Luke’s hospitals.  St. Luke’s University Hospital has earned the 100 Top Major Teaching Hospital designation from IBM Watson Health seven times total and five years in a row. St. Luke’s has also been cited by IBM Watson Health as a 50 Top Cardiovascular Program.  Utilizing the Epic electronic medical record (EMR) system for both inpatient and outpatient services, the Network is a multi-year recipient of the Most Wired award recognizing the breadth of the SLUHN’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.