Ioannis Pashakis//July 22, 2019
Penn State Health is planning to build a new acute care hospital in East Hempfield Township, Lancaster County next year, adding new competition to the market.
The Hershey-based health system has announced it will be seeking approval from East Hempfield Township as it moves forward on a plan to build a new 30-acre hospital campus at the intersection of State Road and Harrisburg Pike.
The hospital would feature private inpatient beds, an emergency department, physician offices, various specialty inpatient services, an imaging lab and complete medical and surgical capabilities, the hospital system wrote in a press release on Monday.
It is the second new hospital for Penn State Health. It also is building a new hospital in Hampden Township, Cumberland County.
“We are committed to building a regional health network across Central Pennsylvania that gives our patients a full range of care right in their neighborhoods,” said Steve Massini, CEO of Penn State Health. “This new acute care facility is another step toward delivering on our promise to ensure the communities we serve are within 10 minutes of our primary care providers, 20 minutes of our specialty care and 30 minutes of our acute care.”
The system wrote in its release that the new hospital will provide care to residents of Lancaster, Lebanon and York counties at a location closer to them than the system’s anchor hospital, Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center in Derry Township, Dauphin County.
The news comes a few months after UPMC Pinnacle closed its UPMC Pinnacle Lancaster hospital. The UPMC Pinnacle Lancaster campus is 5.5 miles away from the proposed site of the new Penn State Health facility.
In April, Penn Medicine Lancaster General Health announced it was considering an expansion to its Duke Street hospital in order to keep up with the increase in patients stemming from the closure of UPMC Pinnacle Lancaster.