By Brian Pedersen February 9, 2015 at 8:00 AM
Rendering of St. Luke’s – Monroe Campus, which is expected to open late next year. (Contributed)
Rendering of St. Luke’s – Monroe Campus, which is expected to open late next year. (Contributed)
A new $80 million hospital in Monroe County could bring with it hundreds of jobs but also close gaps in the county’s health care delivery system, encouraging future economic growth.
Bolstered by a recently upgraded bond rating, St. Luke’s University Health Network, headquartered in Fountain Hill, will issue $75 million in bonds through the Pocono Mountains Industrial Park Authority to finance a hospital in Stroud Township which is expected to open by the end of 2016.
The hospital would be the network’s seventh and its first in Monroe County.
Construction could begin in March as soon as the snow melts, said Bob Martin, senior vice president of St. Luke’s University Health Network. The St. Luke’s Monroe Campus would be on a 41-acre parcel along Route 611 at the Bartonsville exit of Interstate 80.
“It’s a key location of a major Northeast corridor; it’s kind of where the action is,” Martin said.
The development will bring a significant number of full-time jobs but also could stem the migration of consumers seeking health care treatment outside Monroe County.
“We’ve always been big supporters of the health care delivery system in our region,” said Chuck Leonard, executive director of Pocono Mountains Economic Development Corp. and PMIPA. “We hope that industry will continue to grow and create the kinds of jobs we need for the future.”
However, Leonard said, Monroe residents are leaving the region for medical services, traveling north to Wilkes-Barre and Scranton or south to the Lehigh Valley.
“There are some gaps in our health care delivery system,” Leonard said. “We have a significant migration of individuals seeking medical treatment.”
That migration is an issue that rises repeatedly when new, particularly large companies want to move to a region because of the health care impact on employees, Leonard said. Large companies, including those that employ 100 or more, look at the health care delivery system before selecting a site, he said.
For decades, patients from the region have gone to St. Luke’s campuses in Fountain Hill and Bethlehem Township, Martin said.
“Historically, we’ve had a large presence,” he said.
St. Luke’s will have at least six significant facilities in Monroe County, not including this one, he added. These smaller Monroe facilities, which include physician practices, have existed with St. Luke’s for about 20 years, and the network employs about 35 to 40 physicians and advanced practitioners in the county.
With the number of patients that drive from Monroe to the Bethlehem Township and Fountain Hill campuses, the network found that each year about 80 of these patients visit for overnight stays and about 2,000 to tens of thousands of visits are outpatient stays, a figure that has been rising 10 percent to 15 percent each year, Martin said.
“We’ve gotten a positive response from the community and others that welcome competition,” Martin said. “I think we can say the competition has made us better. I think the same will be true up in Monroe County.”
The primary hospital in Monroe County is Pocono Medical Center, part of Pocono Health System, in East Stroudsburg.
Geoffrey Roche, spokesman for Pocono Medical Center, declined to comment for this article.
Pocono Medical Center has more than 200 physicians and 1,850 employees. It recently hosted a grand opening of its West End Healthcare Center in Brodheadsville in the county.
PMC plans to build a second hospital campus, Pocono Medical Center West, on 40 acres in Tannersville. According to a prior Lehigh Valley Business article from October 2014, hospital officials plan to begin construction in about 18 months.
At St. Luke’s Monroe Campus, the network will have 200 permanent full-time positions once it opens, Martin said, with job growth expected.
As an example, when St. Luke’s Anderson Campus opened, it had a similar amount of full-time jobs, but now has about 650.
The contract for the construction management firm hired for the project has yet to be finalized. Martin said he expects about 200 workers on-site any given day, with a potential completion in October 2016 and an opening by the end of that year.
“We’ve got the process down; it’s about 18 months to build a hospital,” he said.
The campus will have 108 beds and room for future growth, with potential for additional buildings, Martin said.
Modeled after the Anderson Campus in Bethlehem Township, the Monroe Campus will share the same New Jersey architect with similar design features and efficiencies in mind.
“The scale of that hospital is really what most patients want,” Martin said.
Those who work at and manage the Anderson Campus also provided input in the design, he said.
Costs to build are lower than traditional hospital construction, according to Martin, since some functions are centralized through the St. Luke’s network and do not need to be built at the new site.
Total construction costs should be about $80 million, which covers the cost of furniture and equipment. About $45 million of that amount is for the construction of the building, Martin said.
The first phase for the construction is the hospital; other buildings are planned as placeholders so the campus has a logical place to grow into, Martin said.
“The average hospital in our network has been where it is for 100 years,” he said.
In 2011, the Anderson Campus opened with a hospital, medical office building and cancer center. Shortly afterward, it outgrew its emergency department and had to double the space.
At the Monroe Campus, plans call for two medical office buildings and a building for the hospital to expand into.
The 180,000-square-foot hospital will have four floors, with the emergency department and outpatient rooms on the first floor, with the top three floors for patients. The fourth floor will remain unfinished.
The emergency department should be able to handle 60,000 visits per year, with about 30 treatment bays and a heliport on the roof, Martin said.
St. Luke’s is expecting to develop only half of the 41-acre site and add walking trails. Wigwam Creek goes through the site.
St. Luke’s also is financing several road infrastructure improvements around the site on Route 611, including replacing a bridge, adding a lane and installing a traffic light at the entrance.