New Health Center in Jim Thorpe

St. Luke’s University Health Network (SLUHN) held a ribbon-cutting ceremony today, April 6, to celebrate completion of phase one of its new St. Luke’s Health Center in Jim Thorpe. Patients will be seen there starting April 10. Health network leaders, care givers and local residents, legislators and government officials participated in the event. 

Located at 1122 North St., Jim Thorpe, this 8,700 square-foot facility initially will provide family medicine, by local doctor Daniel Plavin, MD (St. Luke’s Jim Thorpe Primary Care); nephrology care by Brittany Cataldo, DO, Cheryl Lipson, MD, Nicholas Varvarelis, DO, Sarah Livengood, PAC and Ann Acevedo, CRNP (St. Luke’s Nephrology Associates-Carbon County); and outpatient laboratory services.

Dr. Plavin, who considers Jim Thorpe his hometown, recalls having to travel as a child to Stroudsburg for medical care. His entire family lives nearby in Lake Harmony.

“The Jim Thorpe Health Center will bring these essential and specialty health services closer to home for the members of this great community where I grew up,” said Dr. Plavin, a graduate of the St Luke’s Rural Family Medicine residency based nearby in Tamaqua. “The goal is to provide top-notch primary care locally and close to home."

St. Luke’s Nephrology Associates-Carbon County provides the diagnosis, treatment and management of conditions and diseases of the kidney, including kidney failure, including dialysis-related care, hypertension-related kidney disease, as well as uncontrolled hypertension, polycystic kidney disease and electrolyte abnormalities. 

Phase two opening of the Health Center, scheduled for this summer, will expand space for primary care visits and introduce gastrointestinal medicine physicians and other specialists to the town.

According to John Nespoli, president of St. Luke’s Carbon Campus, “Bringing these services to the Jim Thorpe community is another step in the network’s investment to increase access to world-class care that St. Luke’s provides throughout its 14-county service area.” 

SLUHN has been named a Top Workplaces 2023 by the Morning Call. In addition, St. Luke’s has been named a Top Workplace nationally, in the Philadelphia region, and in New Jersey. St. Luke’s is the ONLY healthcare institution in Pennsylvania and the third-highest ranked healthcare entity in the nation to be deemed a Top Workplace in 2023.

“On behalf of the board, management team and staff of St. Luke’s Carbon Campus, we are honored to be welcomed as the region’s preeminent health care provider and to partner with our neighbors to improve the health of their community.”

This new facility is one of over 20 St. Luke’s ambulatory sites in Carbon County with more than 50 family practice providers and over 100 specialty medical and surgical providers.  Some 200,000 people visited the St. Luke’s outpatient and emergency sites in Carbon County over the past year.

The Jim Thorpe Health Center, located a few doors away at 1104 North St., offers urgent care/walk-in services for bumps, bruises and non-emergent illness, and radiology (x-ray) scans.

Since graduating from St. Luke’s Rural Family Medicine Residency in 2022, as chief medical resident, Dr. Plavin has been caring for patients at the St. Luke’s Albrightsville Primary Care during construction in Jim Thorpe. He treats patients of all ages, from newborns to adolescents to adults and geriatrics, providing preventive, acute care and lifestyle medicine. He also brings special skills to the region in rural and wilderness medicine, having earned a novel fellowship certification from the Wilderness Medicine Society of America after completing his residency.  If he’s not in the office, he can be found working part time in the local emergency rooms or volunteering with local Fire/EMS squads.