Penn Highlands Mon Valley continues service expansion

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Peter Adamo

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Mark Hoffman

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A cardiac catheterization lab is a vital part of the hospital’s interventional radiology services.

Courtesy of Penn Highlands Healthcare

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Since the former Mon Valley Hospital affiliated with Penn Highlands Healthcare in October 2021, services have been expanded and new specialties introduced.

“When the affiliation happened, we identified many opportunities to help the hospital provide more services to the community,” explained Mark Norman, chief operating officer for Penn Highlands Healthcare. “We made a commitment to ensure the communities there in the Mon Valley had convenient access to high quality primary care and specialty care services. We’ve done that through a recruitment of providers in a number of specialties.”

Areas in which Penn Highlands Mon Valley hospital have expanded include cardiology, family medicine, interventional radiology, neurosciences, oncology, orthopedics, pulmonology and vascular surgery.

“We’ve uncovered some opportunities to do things a little different and new or things we used to do in the past that are worthy of bringing back,” said Peter Adamo, the Southwest Regional President and President of Penn Highlands Mon Valley.

Adamo said areas of emphasis are orthopedics, cardiology and oncology.

The Hahne Cancer Center at Penn Highlands Mon Valley offers advanced radiation oncology therapies, and the surgical and interventional oncology services have been expanded to treat liver and colon cancers, among others. There also are some new approaches to cancer treatment.

“We hope we can bring some new technologies into the (operating room) to support sophisticated kinds of surgery that is performed alongside cancer care,” Adamo said.

Among the services at the cancer center is high-dose, short-duration therapy.

“What used to be maybe a four-week regimen for radiation oncology for various parts of the body, we’re now able to do in five doses and in one week,” Adamo said. “That seems to be one of the biggest breakthroughs in cancer treatment.”

One of the fastest-evolving specialties in the state is interventional radiology, which involves treating a wide range of conditions.

The opening of Penn Highlands cardiology in Monongahela provides a staff of top physicians in that field.

“We’ve essentially brought to town some of the leading experts in interventional cardiology,” Adamo said. “They’re doing some procedures now that we didn’t do in the past. We’re doing more complicated cases.”

In the area of orthopedics, more innovative procedures, including minimally invasive surgeries, are being performed.

“We’ve more than tripled our capacity,” Adamo said. “We’re doing a lot more with hips, knees and joints. It’s a lot more of what this population needs.”

Family medicine also is a big part of the expansion. Penn Highlands Family Medicine in Rostraver recently increased the number of providers as well as the office space in the Mon Valley HealthPlex. The Penn Highlands Family Medicine office located in one of the suites offers walk-in hours Monday through Friday, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

“Sometimes it’s hard to get an appointment at the last minute,” Norman said. “This walk-in clinic is designed for patients who need a quick run to the doctor.”

Also, a new primary care office opened on Country Club Road in Carroll Township.

The Penn Highlands Lung Center in Rostraver Township offers access to quality lung care.

The hospital also opened the CNX Foundation Substance Recovery Unit in the fall.

The affiliation between the two facilities seems to be going well since its inception.

“It takes a lot of time to build services and recruit providers, but we’re well on track with our strategic plan and our initiatives that we set forth,” Norman said. “There’s still more to do. It’s been a challenging period, coming through COVID, but we feel we’ve kept our sights on our strategic plan and tried not to drift away from that.”