St. Luke’s University Health Network has completed a major expansion to its Upper Bucks campus, doubling the size of its emergency room.
The Milford Township hospital opened in 2019, replacing its aging Quakertown campus. Last fall, St. Luke’s announced an $8 million, 11,000-square-foot ER expansion that would add 12 new patient treatment bays, increasing the total number to 28.
According to St. Luke’s, the hospital was built with the expectation that it would only need to accommodate 15,000 to 16,000 patients yearly, but this proved inadequate, leading to occasional over-capacity issues. The network made a small expansion to the emergency department, which increased capacity to 22,000 patients yearly. This latest expansion increases capacity to 40,000 patients yearly. It will open on Thursday.
“We are growing our ER capacity in response to our patients, who tell us they are pleased with the quality of care they receive here,” Dennis Pfleiger, president of the Upper Bucks Campus, said in a news release.
Pfleiger added that demand at the Upper Bucks campus is expected to continue rising as the region grows, and with the continued aging of the baby boomer population.
The new ER was built with $2.5 million in Redevelopment Assistance Capital Program funds secured by former state Sen. Robert Mensch and with the financial support of Quakretown-area business owner Vincent Randazzo, who contributed $50,000 for the pediatric area in the waiting room.
The network has made other expansions to St. Luke’s-Upper Bucks. It has invested more than $250 million in technology, staffing, services and facilities. In 2023, St. Luke’s added a three-story, 118,000-square-foot tower on the west side of the original hospital, adding cancer services, expanding obstetrics, birthing and neonatal intensive care units, and increasing the number of inpatient beds on the campus to a total of 93.
St. Luke’s also opened outpatient pediatrics, OBGYN and gastrointestinal practices in Harleysville and owns 100 acres of open land on its Upper Bucks hospital campus for program and facility development.
