Lehigh Valley Health Network’s $111 million expansion of the Lehigh Valley Hospital-Cedar Crest emergency ward has been approved by the Salisbury Township Planning Commission.

Planners voted 6-0, with one abstention, to approve the 1200 S. Cedar Crest Blvd. – LVHN emergency department expansion project.

The LVHN project was submitted as a preliminary-final land development plan. Planners at the Sept. 11 meeting also voted 6-0 with one abstention to approve a waiver to combine the preliminary and final plan for the project.

The project is to include additional parking spaces for physicians and staff to create what LVHN officials describe as “a state-of-the-art acute care facility.”

Dr. David B. Burmeister, chairman of the Department of Emergency and Hospital Medicine, told planners when the project was first submitted in July, that in his 10 years as head of the emergency department, the number of patients using LVH-Cedar Crest has increased from 56,000 annually to 90,000 as of November 2017.

The LVH-Cedar Crest project includes an expanded adult emergency department and a new observation unit, expected to open in the fall of 2020, and an expanded children’s emergency room and observation unit, expected to open in 2021.

Utilities relocation is to begin in October.

Construction is to start in December or January 2019.

The work is to be accomplished in phases. When the adult emergency room opens, the existing emergency room will be renovated to become the expanded children’s emergency room.

Construction will not affect patients’, visitors’ and EMS crews’ access to the emergency room by car or ambulance, according to LVHN officials.

The LVHN board of trustees approved the plan to construct the 120,000 square foot addition to the hospital’s emergency room, bringing the total size to 157,000 square feet. The new building is to be one story.

The expansion will bring the number of beds available to almost 200. It will include 97 adult emergency room beds (there are now 42 beds) and 26 beds in the children’s emergency room (there are now 12 beds).

The adult and children’s emergency rooms will have separate entrances and waiting areas.

The expanded facility will have three trauma bays, designated diagnostic testing, laboratory and pharmacy space, behavioral health care space, large waiting areas, additional parking and more amenities for patients and families.

For patients who need additional care but do not require an inpatient hospital stay, the expansion will include a 62-bed observation unit adjacent to the emergency room. Keeping these patients in the new observation unit will create efficiencies and eliminate confusion by helping patients understand they’re not being admitted to the hospital, according to LVHN officials.

The observation unit will be staffed by clinicians from the hospital unit where observation patients now receive care.

The children’s emergency room will have 12 observation beds for caregivers to evaluate patients’ needs.

The project’s stormwater detention calculations were submitted to the Lehigh Valley Planning Commission and were approved, Salisbury Township Engineer David J. Tettemer, of Keystone Consulting Engineers, told planners in his presentation of his Sept. 5 project review letter at the Sept. 11 planners’ meeting.

About 4 feet of water would remain in the detention pond for about five days after a rainfall.

The project was continued by township planners after it was withdrawn for consideration at the Aug. 14 township planning commission meeting.

Township planners voted 6-1 with one abstention to table the project’s preliminary-final land development plan first presented at the July 10 planners’ meeting.

The project includes improvements to parking lot islands and trees at the recommendation of planners.

The LVH-Cedar Crest south access road is to be relocated.

New traffic patterns will have ambulances enter the hospital campus off Fish Hatchery Road.

A 12-foot-high, 75-foot-wide earthen berm topped by trees is to be built along the southwest area of the LVH-Cedar Crest campus to provide noise reduction for homeowners’ residences in the vicinity.

There are 104 parking spaces now with about 240 parking spaces planned.

During construction, the MedEvac helipad will be relocated to an area off Fish Hatchery Road near an employee parking lot.

The new helipad will be on an elevated space above the new ambulance entrance.

The FAA must approve the helipad location.

At the July 10 township planners’ meeting, Salisbury Township Chief of Police Allen W. Stiles requested a room in the new facility to handle potentially antagonistic injured patients and their families brought to the LVH-Cedar Crest emergency room.