HANOVER TOWNSHIP, Pa. — A groundbreaking for the Lehigh Valley’s newest behavioral health hospital was held Wednesday.
Lehigh Valley Health Network (LVHN) along with Universal Health Service (UHS) are building the facility on Macada Road in Hanover Township, Northampton County, next to LVHN’s Muhlenberg hospital.
“This facility will offer 144 beds that include geriatric care, adult care and adolescent inpatient care. There is also an adult partial hospital as well as an adolescent partial hospital, as well as some intensive outpatient treatment,” said Dr. Edward Norris, chair of psychiatry at LVHN.
Norris explained that the 52 adult beds and 13 adolescent beds at LVHN-Muhlenberg are not enough to accommodate the need for this type of care.
“There's just not enough beds. We actually send over 1,600 patients south to other facilities because we're full,” said the physician. “One in five Americans suffer with mental illness, and only half even reach out for care, and this is another option to allow people to get more care.”
The new hospital will be located across from the Lehigh Valley Hospital–Muhlenberg campus.
"We have a crisis across the country, and the Lehigh Valley is not immune when it comes to anxiety, stress, and mental and behavioral health issues."Dr. Brian Nester, President and CEO, LVHN
"We have a crisis across the country, and the Lehigh Valley is not immune when it comes to anxiety, stress, and mental and behavioral health issues. Those issues are exploding, sadly, in our society, and we need to be there,” said Dr. Brian Nester, the President and CEO of LVHN.
"The reality is, acute inpatient care is really a need right now. We can get people in, we can stabilize them, get them to a point where we can start to bring them back into the community, with therapy and access to family and helpful resources that support them."
Nester said that LVHN will continue to provide inpatient and outpatient behavioral health services, including extensive telepsychiatry programs.
LVHN is partnering with UHS to provide more of these services. Matt Peterson, president of behavioral health there, said they have combined "the best of both of our two systems to deliver high-quality behavioral healthcare.”
“We certainly are an inpatient psychiatric service. That's a big part of what we do. We certainly do outpatient. We will have partial hospitalization programs, we will have intensive outpatient, we'll also be doing telehealth services, and then figuring out how we integrate with Lehigh Valley and some of their other services,” Peterson said.
LVHN and UHS expect the facility to open in the fall of 2025.
