Carbon County Pennsylvania opened the doors to its newest hospital in 65 years on November 21, 2021. The trauma-4 facility is expected to treat about 50,000 emergency care patients a year, thanks to a $98.5 million Community Facilities direct USDA loan investment for the project and a $16 million guaranteed loan. 

The $80 million Carbon campus is part of St. Luke’s University Health Network. This is the biggest such project in Franklin Township’s history. The additional loan amount was used for construction costs. Local healthcare officials said they are confident the three-story, 80-patient-room, 160,000-square-foot facility, will redefine health care access, convenience, and quality for the local and population and surrounding areas. 

The highly comprehensive care will allow patients to experience their entire health care journey from primary to specialized care in vascular, ontological, gynecological, gastroenterological, and other specialties all in one location. The hospital will create hundreds of jobs including the recruitment of elite doctors from across the U.S.

The state-of-the-art hospital will provide the Carbon community greater access to surgical services and cancer services support. Services including women’s imaging, mammograms, lung screening, and colon cancer screenings are among the many focal points.

“This is a big economic driver in the community,” Bob Morgan, state director for USDA RD in Pennsylvania said. “If you have an opportunity to locate a new facility, one of the things that you want to provide is not only great health care for your employees, but also the ability to receive it without having to travel great distances. And so this makes this is it’s an improvement obviously, for the people that live here now, but it also can be an improvement for the people who may move here and it makes Carbon County more attractive in the economic marketplace.”

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