St. Luke’s University Health Network

Anderson opens pediatric unit

St. Luke’s Anderson Pediatrics, is now open in the St. Luke’s Anderson Campus Medical Office Building, 1700 St. Luke’s Blvd., Suite 403.

Near a St. Luke’s Obstetrics and gynecology office, the office is open Monday through Friday, and has on-call providers available by phone “after hours” and for emergencies. The practice provides routine pediatric care for patients ages newborn to 21 years old that includes well visits, sick visits, physicals, management of ADHD, simple procedures and more.

St. Luke’s Anderson Pediatrics’ board-certified pediatricians are Vhada Sharma, M.D. and Samone Nore, M.D.

For more information about St. Luke’s Anderson Pediatrics or to make an appointment, call 484-503-0060.

DIEP update

St. Luke’s Plastic & Reconstructive Surgeons Lino Miele, M.D., who joined the practice in 2015, and Juan Carlos Martinez, M.D., who joined in September, are trained in plastic and reconstructive surgery. Also microsurgery experts, they perform deep inferior epigastric artery perforator breast reconstruction.

This technique rebuilds the breast lost to mastectomy by using tissue taken from another part of the patient’s body, usually the abdomen. No muscle is moved or repositioned.

Dr. Martinez completed a microsurgery fellowship at the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center – Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute in Columbus, Ohio.

Dr. Miele was trained in DIEP at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and completed National Institutes of Health sponsored postdoctoral research fellowship at Harvard Medical School.

Two high-risk pregnancy doctors join SLUHN

Meredith Birsner M.D., a high-risk pregnancy expert who invented a device to teach breech extraction of twins, has joined St. Luke’s University Health Network Maternal Fetal Medicine group, where she will care for patients and help train residents on treating serious birth complications.

She attended and then worked and taught at Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia. She completed her residency in obstetrics and gynecology and her fellowship in maternal fetal medicine at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore.

Andrea Ardite, M.D., has joined St. Luke’s Hamilton OB/GYN, 1941 W. Hamilton St. and 322 S. 17 St., Allentown, from a position in a Brooklyn inner city hospital system.

Her clinical interests include high-risk pregnancies and obesity in women with a focus on nutrition and urban and under served medicine.

Originally from Bellmawr, N.J., she earned an undergraduate degree from Rider University, N.J., and a medical degree from Ross University School of Medicine, Dominica, West Indies. She completed her residency at Brookdale University Hospital and Medical Center in Brooklyn, N.Y., where she continued to work for almost 20 years.

St. Luke’s given Quality Score from Medicare & Medicaid

St. Luke’s Anderson, Miners and Warren Campuses have received the highest quality rating from the annual quality and safety hospital review conducted by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid. These campuses were the only hospitals in the region to receive this rating.

The results were based on 57 quality measures collected from 4,000 Medicare-certified hospitals. The quality measures spanned over categories including mortality, safety of care, readmission, infection, complication rates, patient experience, effectiveness and timeliness of care and efficient use of medical imaging.

Only 9 percent of hospitals in the country were given the five star achievement, with the majority of hospitals receiving three stars.

SLUHN given Teaching Hospital honor

St. Luke’s University Health Network has been named one of the nation’s 100 Top Hospitals in the Major Teaching Hospital category by IBM Watson HealthTM, formerly Truven Health Analytics. This is the fourth year in a row and the sixth time overall that St. Luke’s has been given this honor.

This recognition is one of the health industry’s most prestigious honors. Unlike many other health care awards, it is based entirely on an independent, scientific review of objective data from government and other publicly available sources.

Supplemental donor breast milk program

St. Luke’s University Health Network has partnered with Three Rivers Mothers’ Milk Bank, Pittsburgh, to provide donor breast milk to late pre-term and term babies who need supplemental feeding after birth. The bridge program will be used in both Allentown and Bethlehem nurseries for babies who need extra help with feeding in the first few hours and days after birth until the mothers are able to sufficiently breast feed.

Three Rivers Mothers’ Milk Bank uses screened donors and pasturized milk for purchase and shipping to health care facilities across the country.

Lehigh Valley Health Network

Medtronic partnership announced

Medtronic plc medical technology and Lehigh Valley Health Network announced, on Feb. 28, an affiliation aimed at developing innovative, sustainable, and integrated value-based solutions to improve healthcare outcomes for the patients served by LVHN.

The partnership will create programs that span more than 70 major medical conditions while reducing the costs of care. Initial programs include cardiovascular disease, stroke, and lung cancer, with additional areas to be identified as the affiliation progresses.

Chang named chief of thoracic surgery

Richard S. Chang, M.D., has been named Lehigh Valley Health Network’s new chief of thoracic surgery. He specializes in using daVinci Xi surgical robots to remove patients’ tumors of the lung, chest and esophagus.

LVHN is the first, and currently the only, network in the area using this type of robot.

Chang will train other surgeons to use the Xi robot, the most exact device of its kind available. He practices meditation and martial arts. He earned a black belt in Wado-Kai Karate, which builds inner strength and calm, critical to interacting and empathizing with persons facing life-threatening conditions.

Fiscal year reviewed at annual meeting

LVHN’s President and Chief Executive Officer Brian Nester, DO, MBA, FACOEP, reviewed the 2017 fiscal year in December during the organization’s community annual meeting.

The health network’s Board of Trustees and about 200 community members met in the auditorium at Lehigh Valley Hospital - Cedar Crest.

Topics included the establishment of three new LVHN institutes, new technologies, innovations and services introduced in 2017 that make quality care through the health network more accessible and convenient. New facilities were opened, which give communities access to the care they need close to home.