St. Luke’s Breaks Ground on Pediatric Specialty Center in Center Valley

From left, Carol Kuplen, Dr. Jennifer Janco, Jessika Haynos and Dr. Pam Abrams. 

St. Luke’s University Health Network has broken ground on a new Pediatric Specialty Center in Center Valley. (Click here for video of groundbreaking event)

The three-story building totaling 37,500 square feet will house multiple pediatric specialties.

 “Now more than ever, our families want to stay close to home – but still expect and deserve – expert care for their children,” St. Luke’s Chief of Pediatrics Dr. Jennifer Janco said at the groundbreaking ceremony. “This building is a commitment to this community to continue to provide top notch pediatric care to our children. It is the fulfillment of a promise to make access to care easy and convenient… especially for children who need care from multiple specialists.

 The specialties to be housed at the center are: Nephrology, Gastroenterology, Cardiology, Pulmonology, Developmental, Neurology, Endocrinology, Physical Therapy and Occupational Therapy, Pediatric Primary Care, and Pediatric Nutrition.

 “The fact that we now have enough personnel and services to warrant our own building is a wonderful achievement,” said Dr. Pam Abrams, Pediatric Endocrinologist, “not only for all of us to be able to work even more collaboratively with each other, but most importantly for parents to have the convenience of all of their child’s specialists in one location.”

 The Pediatrics Specialty Center, to open in 2022, will be located adjacent to the St. Luke’s Center Valley Health Center at 5445 Lanark Road and the new St. Luke’s Dermatology building, which opened last month at 5415 Lanark Road.

 In her remarks at the ceremony, Carol Kuplen, President of St. Luke’s University Hospital in Fountain Hill, thanked Lanark Partners, owner of the Center Valley site, and Boyle Construction, the general contractor overseeing the construction, as well as Michael Perrucci, Mike Caruso, Sean Boyle, Rob de Beer, Christian Perrucci and Dylan Panebianco.

 St. Luke’s Children’s Services Line Manager Jessika Haynos noted that the groundbreaking for the Pediatric Specialty Center follows on the heels of the opening of the new Pediatric Intensive Care Unit at St. Luke’s University Hospital in February and the new Women & Babies Pavilion at the St. Luke’s Anderson Campus in Bethlehem Township in January. The Women & Babies Pavilion includes a new labor and delivery unit.

 “The growth this service line has experienced over the past few years is nothing less than remarkable, and I am so proud to be part of Network that is committed to keeping care close to home for families in this community,” Haynos said.

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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 (SLUHN) is a fully integrated, regional, non-profit network of more than 16,000 employees providing services at 12 hospitals and 300+ outpatient sites.  With annual net revenue greater than $2 billion, the Network’s service area includes 11 counties: Lehigh, Northampton, Berks, Bucks, Carbon, Montgomery, Monroe, Schuylkill and Luzerne 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 Lehigh Valley’s first and only regional medical school campus.  It also operates the nation’s longest continuously operating School of Nursing, established in 1884, and 38 fully accredited graduate medical educational programs with 347 residents and fellows.  St. Luke’s is the only Lehigh Valley-based health care system to earn 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 and a Newsweek World’s Best Hospital.  U.S. News & World Report ranked St. Luke’s #1 in the Lehigh Valley and #6 in the state.  Two of IBM Watson Health’s 100 Top Hospitals are St. Luke’s hospitals.  St. Luke’s University Hospital has earned the 100 Top Major Teaching Hospital designation from IBM Watson Health eight times total and six 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.