St. Luke’s employs about 20,000 people network-wide, including 1,500 between its Miners and Carbon campuses alone, but about 25% of those positions are vacant, according to Carbon Campus President John Nespoli.

“This is kind of a historic time for hospitals and their labor force,” Nespoli said. “We’re in the midst of what is being called the Great Resignation and it’s kind of odd because on one hand you hear about inflation and the challenges of the economy, but our challenge is finding people to fill our jobs.”

On Thursday morning, Nespoli and the staff at St. Luke’s hosted a meeting of the Carbon Chamber and Economic Development Corporation’s Business Education Committee. The committee, Co-Chairwoman Jennifer Aquila said, meets once per month with the goal of connecting area schools with local businesses.

“Vacancies are at an all-time high for us so we are doing all sorts of incentives, but this is an opportunity to turn young people on to jobs in health care,” Nespoli said.

Thursday’s meeting, held at St. Luke’s-Carbon in Franklin Township, included an overview of the network’s growth locally over the past several years, followed by a tour of the hospital.

“We had so many patient transfers out of the Carbon County area down to Bethlehem or Cedar Crest,” Nespoli said regarding the need for a new, local hospital. “We thought if we could build a really beautiful medical center, recruit a lot of doctors and provide the highest level of care, people would stay local. Since we opened, we have seen about a 90% reduction in people leaving the county for care.”

St. Luke’s opened its Carbon campus in November 2021 and, according to its chief operating officer Joseph Pinto, has quickly realized the need for expansion.

“We recently expanded our emergency room from 17 beds to a 30-bed capacity,” Pinto said. “In March, we will be going from 40 acute care rooms to 52 rooms. There is a capacity to go up to 80 and we feel this sets up well for future growth in the next 5-10 years.”

In the summer of 2024, Pinto said, St. Luke’s also plans to open a medical office building attached to the hospital which will feature services including orthopedics, oncology, cardiology, pain management, women’s imaging and more.

With those expansion efforts comes the need for more and more employees and St. Luke’s said it hopes to work with the chamber committee on getting area students the exposure they need to decide if one of the many career paths in the health care field is for them.

“Any type of programs we can develop together, we want to be part of that,” Pinto said. “We set up shadowing experiences for my daughter in dental, radiology, and physical therapy and now she has an idea of where she wants to go and what she wants to do. Kids need that exposure to be able to find out for themselves what direction they want to go in.”

According to Aquila, the chamber committee is working to create a menu for schools of employers who would be willing to host field trips or tours so the districts know who to call or how to get that set up.

“When you think about what this committee is doing, the work they are doing to help keep young folks here in our community is so important,” Pinto said. “We need the nurses, technicians, the information technology folks, food services employees and more. The hospital is a mini city when you think about it.”