Hello and welcome to living in the Lehigh Valley, where our focus is your health and wellness.

I'm your host, Brittany Sweeney.

Construction on the Lehigh Valley's newest hospital is underway.

Lehigh Valley Health Network recently broke ground on a behavioral health hospital next to its Muhlenberg campus.

Let's begin With a scoop of a shovel.

the building of Lehigh Valley Health Network's Behavioral Health Hospital is underway.

This facility will offer 144 beds that include geriatric care, adult care and adolescent inpatient care.

There is also a adult partial hospital, as well as an adolescent partial hospital, as well as some intensive outpatient treatment.

Dr. Edward Norris is the chair of psychiatry at LVHN, and he says there's an overwhelming number of patients needing these types of services.

There's such a crisis in mental health and there's not enough care for everybody who needs it.

And in the inpatient world, there's not enough beds here in the Lehigh Valley.

And so add in 144 beds will nearly triple the capacity of inpatient beds.

And so patients will no longer have to travel south to get care and can get care in their own communities and involve their families friends.

Norris explains that even with the current 52 adult beds and 13 adolescent beds at LVHN Muhlenberg, there's still not enough room to meet demand for health care needs.

There's just not enough beds.

We actually send over 1600 patients out to other facilities because we're full.

The new hospital will be across from the Muhlenberg campus on McCarter Road.

It's no surprise, I think, that the number one problem in America, as we face many, many challenges in America, is a growing crisis that has been underway for multiple decades.

We're have a crisis across the country, and the Lehigh Valley is not immune when it comes to anxiety, stress, mental and behavioral health issues.

Those issues are exploding, sadly, in our society, and we need to be there.

In crisis in sufficient care for mental and behavioral health, period and all.

Dr. Brian Nester is LVHN’s president and CEO and says this is where he sees the greatest need for improvements in health care.

The reality is, acute Inpatient care is really in 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.

This is a again, a big, big, big day for us.

Nester went on to say LVHN will continue to provide inpatient and outpatient behavioral health services, including extensive telepsychiatry programs.

LVHN is partnering with Universal Health Services to provide more of this type of care.

So we combine the best of both of our two systems to deliver high quality behavioral health care.

Matt Petersen is president of Behavioral Health for Universal Health Services.

We certainly are an inpatient psychiatric service.

That's a big part of what we do.

We certainly do outpatient.

We'll have partial hospitalization programs.

We'll 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.

So in addition to breaking ground today, we're also breaking some news.

We are pleased to reveal the new brand of the beautiful new facility.

The new name will be Hanover Hill Behavioral health.

Officials announced at the groundbreaking that the hospital will be called Hanover Hill Behavioral Health.

Norris says one in five Americans suffer with mental illness and only half reach out for care.

The hope is that this will open the doors to many more.

And this is another option to allow people to get more care.

LVHN and UHS expect the facility to open in fall of 2025.

The hospital comes as LVHN is opening two other hospitals in Macungie and Gilbertsville that they refer to as neighborhood hospitals.

That will do it for this edition of Living in the Lehigh Valley.

I'm Brittany Sweeney, hoping you stay happy and healthy.