A Complete Network of Health Services

We believe health care should be convenient

Award-winning nurses—Nancy Robson, R.N., and her fellow emergency department nurses at Lehigh Valley Hospital—Cedar Crest were named Best Nursing Team this year by Advance for Nurses magazine.

Tender care at the end of life—The inpatient hospice unit at Lehigh Valley Hospital—17th and Chew is even more comforting after renovations including a waterfall and an overnight room for families. Here visiting patient Leon Baringoldz are his wife, Jewel Baringoldz (left), daughter Randi Senderowitz (right), and granddaughters Rissa, 13, and Marlee, 9, all of Allentown.

High-quality health care that’s convenient and easily accessible—that is our goal for you and your family at Lehigh Valley Hospital and Health Network. Each year we work to make our services more readily available by improving our three hospitals, building regional partnerships, growing our staff and carefully controlling costs.

It’s been an exciting year at Lehigh Valley Hospital—Muhlenberg. In March, we dedicated “the big blue H”—our new state-of-the-art building with the dramatic H-shaped entry. The hospital, with a total of 188 beds in all-private rooms, features an expanded Regional Heart Center, new Center for Critical Care, expanded Cancer Center and new Diagnostic Care Center for fast and convenient testing.

Innovative safety features are built right in. For example, medications are securely stored in patient rooms rather than centrally, for easy access and less chance of error. And the hospital features art displays, natural light and even room service.

Another major ceremony took place in August at Lehigh Valley Hospital—Cedar Crest and I-78: groundbreaking for the new seven-story patient tower. The building will be named the Kasych Family Pavilion for generous donors Charles Kasych Jr., and his sister, Anna Kasych, of Whitehall. The pavilion will contain a 32-bed ICU, new transitional open-heart unit, expanded Regional Burn Center, three new medical-surgical units and space for future growth.

Scheduled to open in 2008, the pavilion is the centerpiece of a $181.5 million expansion project to meet the growing demand for our hospital’s services. The project includes three parking decks and a new medical office building designed for a team approach to complex health problems. We’ll also increase our emergency department, X-ray and CT scan testing areas, and add operating rooms and education space.

Lehigh Valley Hospital and Good Shepherd Specialty Hospital made a space shift this year that benefits both. Good Shepherd moved from our Cedar Crest to our Muhlenberg campus, gaining a central location and all-private rooms in a part of the hospital vacated when the new facility opened there. We, in turn, added 32 medical-surgical beds in the former Good Shepherd space, gaining much needed capacity at Cedar Crest until the expansion there is completed.

Meanwhile, Lehigh Valley Hospital—17th and Chew has seen its own enhancements this year. In response to high demand for arthroscopic surgery (“minimally invasive” procedures using tiny incisions), we’re adding two state-of-the-art orthopedic operating rooms with the latest video and digital imaging equipment.

Demand also has grown for our pediatric clinics at 17th and Chew—visits are up 5 percent in the past year. Waiting times for well-child visits used o be 30-45 days. Our new Advanced Access program, the first of its kind in a clinic setting, lets parents call ahead and get an appointment within three days.

‘They saved my life’—Ron Butz of Lehighton might have died after his third heart attack. Through a new program, he was flown from Gnaden Huetten Memorial Hospital to Lehigh Valley Hospital—Cedar Crest for specialized care.

Tracking the quality of heart care—R.N.s Patricia Parker (left) and Katrina Fritz (right) are “cardiac quality nurses,” a new career we created. They make sure all heart patients get the best treatments for their long-term outcomes. Lehigh Valley Hospital scores highly on national cardiac care measures, and Parker and Fritz (shown here with medical resident Joseph Paprota, M.D.) help ensure that.

One of the features of our emergency departments at Cedar Crest and Muhlenberg is MI* Alert, a protocol that ensures quick diagnosis and treatment for anyone having a heart attack. The goal is to open the blocked vessel with angioplasty in 90 minutes or less (the “gold standard” in heart care). The faster the treatment, the less permanent damage to the heart.

This year, we expanded MI Alert into outlying areas. A collaborative program with Gnaden Huetten Memorial Hospital, Palmerton Hospital and Greater Hazleton Health Alliance gives residents in those communities access to our specialized heart care (see photo, left). The program builds local awareness of how to respond to a heart attack and streamlines the transfer here, when necessary, by MedEvac helicopter. We’re also working in partnership with Grand View Hospital and its cardiologists to bring state-of-the-art technology to their community through their own cardiac catheterization lab.

Great health care requires great caregivers—and finding them is a challenge for hospitals around the country today. Nursing shortages have been a problem for many years. Now, a significant shortage of physicians is developing.

At Lehigh Valley Hospital, we’re competing successfully to bring you the highest-quality professional team. We built our nursing staff from 1,750 to 1,900 this year and increased our medical staff by 99 to a record total of 1,101. Even in hard-to- find specialties like maternal fetal medicine, physicians choose to practice here. (We have six of these specialists at Lehigh Valley Hospital.)

We make it a point to attract the best people, and to make sure they know how much we value them by offering programs like Culture of Wellness, an employee benefit that helps them stay healthy. And we put our values as an employer on the line by taking part in surveys like the Best Places to Work in PA. Last year, Lehigh Valley Hospital was the No. 1 hospital in the state, and in the top two of all large companies.

The cost of health care is a concern to virtually all Americans. Hospitals are challenged to keep costs to a minimum, while at the same time offering the highest-quality programs and the latest technologies.

Lehigh Valley Hospital keeps this balance. Data from Solucient (the leading health care information service) shows that our three hospitals are in the 26th-28th percentile for expenses per admission—meaning that 72-74 percent of similar-size hospitals have higher costs than ours. Over the nine years these data have been available, we’ve regularly ranked in the lowest 50 percent for total costs.

We’re cutting costs while caring for more people (inpatient admissions increased 8.4 percent this year) with more complex illnesses. We manage to do it by being as efficient as possible. In fact, our approaches are so innovative that hospitals around the world come to consult with us. We expedite patient transfers and discharges, and electronically track the status of every hospital bed so it’s cleaned promptly for the next patient. Our new Capacity Throughput Council is dedicated to ensuring that we operate at peak efficiency.

The point of all this is to make the best use of our resources in caring for you. Financial stability is a key element in quality health care. It allows us to invest in new programs and facilities to better meet your needs, and to care for the poor in our community. One measure of an organization’s financial success is its bond rating. This year, we were upgraded to A1 status by Moody’s and A+ by Standard and Poor’s. And we won Stevie Awards—“the business world’s Oscars”—for Best MIS and Systems Organization (for our technologies to improve patient care and safety) and Best Support Team (for boosting bed capacity and cutting emergency wait times).

Of course, good management is only one aspect of financial success for a nonprofit organization like Lehigh Valley Hospital and Health Network. Just as important is the support and partnership of our community. Through the years, a series of visionaries including Leonard Pool, Carl Anderson, John and Dorothy Morgan, and the Fred Jaindl family have invested in helping us grow from a good hospital to a great one.

Now, we’re asking for our community’s support in our new fundraising campaign, “Investing in Excellence Here at Home.” With a $45 million initial five-year goal, the campaign will give donors the opportunity to help us build new facilities, enhance patient care, research and education, and improve our community’s health.

ARTICLE TOOLS: