STROUD TOWNSHIP, PA — Sounds of power tools fill the air inside the construction zone at St. Luke's Monroe campus near Stroudsburg.
Work is underway to get the hospital's new four-story tower up and running.
Don Seiple is the president of the Monroe campus.
He says the hospital expansion helps fulfill St. Luke's goal of keeping health care close to home.
"We learned pretty quickly that the demand from the community was much greater than we expected, and then COVID came. Even more demand and as a network we are supported in Monroe county of continuing to bring services to this community and we started the project," said Seiple.
For the past 18 months, about 200 temporary construction workers have been working on the 90-million-dollar project.
The hospital also plans to add 50 to 60 full-time employees before the doors open.
"We are adding 165,000 square feet, 36 medical surgery beds. We are adding one more or with the capability of adding up two to 4 more to what we already have. We're expanding our perioperative area and our procedural space with an interventional radiology suite," Seiple said.
Many of the departments here in the existing building will be moved to the new building. Now, the President of the Monroe campus says that doing this will allow for future growth.
"Two floors of this building will be left as shell space. Some of the construction is moving departments that will allow us in the future to like our existing services like our emergency department and our outpatient services, but also allow us to think about services that we currently offer in the community," Seiple said.
The new portion of the hospital opens on April 8th.