LVHN growing its commitment to community care with new neighborhood hospital

After a Nov. 1 groundbreaking, Lehigh Valley Health Network has begun plans for its third neighborhood hospital as part of its efforts to provide care that is more convenient and accessible to people in areas that need such facilities. 

The newest neighborhood hospital near Tannersville in central Monroe County, which is expected to open in the winter of 2026, will join similar facilities in Gilbertsville and Macungie, that have a goal to help meet increasing demand for such care. 

The Tannersville hospital is planned for a new health care campus on the site of the former Hunter Pocono Peterbilt truck dealership on Golden Slipper Road, close to major roads including Interstate 80 and Routes 33 and 611. 

 It will be located less than 10 miles from Lehigh Valley Hospital (LVH)–Pocono, with a goal of creating a health care hub in Monroe County, similarly to how the Macungie Neighborhood Hospital added care access in that region. 

In addition to the hospital, a medical office building – Health Center at Tannersville – will also be part of the project and will open at the same time as LVH–Tannersville.  

The new hospital is a type of facility informally known in the health care industry as a neighborhood hospital, with a full-service ER and a limited number of inpatient beds.  

This facility will have 11 emergency room beds and 10 inpatient beds. 

The footprint, at about 20,000 square feet, is smaller than other LVHN hospitals in the region such as LVH–Pocono and LVH–Hecktown Oaks. 

Dr. David Burmeister, chair of the Department of Emergency and Hospital Medicine, said such smaller, more convenient hospitals are becoming popular in health care and help health systems attain many important care goals. 

“There’s a population need for community care,” Burmeister said. “We look at do the infrastructure needs meet the needs that community has.” 

He said neighborhood hospitals can provide better health care access to large population centers that can get most care they need at the smaller, closer hospital. 

Burmeister said the neighborhood hospital model will deliver short ER wait times and favorable door-to-discharge times.  

“Patients will receive the same high-quality, compassionate care and exceptional patient experience that have made LVHN the gold standard in the region,” he said. “The data we have shows better patient satisfaction from smaller neighborhood hospitals. 

He said such factors as convenience and length of stay are factors in that satisfaction. 

The Tannersville hospital will be a licensed and accredited acute care hospital, open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.  

Burmeister said that while most patients can receive all the care they need at such a hospital, patients requiring surgery or higher levels of care will be stabilized and transferred to LVH–Pocono or other LVHN hospitals as needed. 

Other in-house hospital services will include lab, imaging and pharmacy. Imaging services, including X-ray, ultrasound, computed tomography scan and MRI, also will be offered on an outpatient basis. 

Burmeister said the adjacent health center will also be a vital part of the care being provided to the community in Tannersville 

The roughly 30,000-square-foot Health Center at Tannersville will house a variety of medical services, including HNL Lab Medicine, LVPG practices including family medicine and cardiology, outpatient adult rehabilitation and cardiac and vascular diagnostic testing. 

“This hospital will provide closer access to emergency and inpatient care for residents where they live and work, when and where they need it. It strengthens the entire health network for the benefit of our communities and their residents,” said Brian A. Nester, executive vice president and COO of Jefferson, and president of LVHN. 

While Burmeister said plans for the Tannersville Neighborhood Hospital and other expansions into community care were in the works long before the health network merged with Philadelphia’s Jefferson Health, it will likely benefit from investment that is expected to come from Jefferson as part of the merger. 

Jefferson Health included information on a number of proposed capital projects in a bond offering statement issued recently. 

In the document, Jefferson committed to spend $900 million on Lehigh Valley Health Network facilities over the next three years, including projects like Tannersville that had already been planned LVHN.  

LVHN officials confirmed those plans that are covered in the bond offering account for about $184 million of Jefferson’s total financial commitment. 

Other projects covered by the commitment include a Mother Baby Unit at Lehigh Valley Hospital-Pocono in East Stroudsburg; a new three-story building for an emergency department expansion at LVH-Muhlenberg in Bethlehem and the purchase of a medical office building next to LVHN’s neighborhood hospital in Gilbertsville.