New Bus Route to Serve St. Luke’s Miners Campus

Beginning January 2, patients at St. Luke’s Miners Campus in Coaldale will have consistent bus service from Pottsville to Tamaqua, McAdoo and the Schuylkill Valley.

Schuylkill Transportation System, or STS, has announced a dedicated bus route from Pottsville to St. Luke’s Miners Campus that will service the local communities.

“It’s really exciting and we’re so thankful to STS for dedicating this fixed bus route,” said Micah Gursky, St. Luke’s Rural Health Clinic administrator who worked with STS on making the long sought-after route a reality. “Our patients never had a fixed bus route with regular scheduled stops come to St. Luke’s Miners Campus before.”

The new route means that people throughout the Schuylkill Valley can take the bus to see their doctor or their loved ones who are being treated at the hospital. In addition, people who are transported to the hospital by ambulance or other emergency means now have a way back home once they are treated and released.

In the past, patients would need to call to make arrangements for transportation.

Gursky said that St. Luke’s has been working with STS for several years in hopes of getting a route. The option became available with the closing of the Schuylkill Mall, leaving STS with available buses and drivers to create the new route.

The new route incorporates positive changes to the Middleport-Tamaqua-McAdoo route. It runs from Pottsville’s Union Station three times a day, departing at 8 a.m., 11:15 a.m., and 2:10 p.m. The loop route stops at St. Luke’s Miners at 9:25 a.m., 10:25 a.m., 11:57 a.m., 12:57 a.m., 2:56 p.m., and the final time at 4:05 p.m., before returning to Union Station at 5:10 p.m.

Patients from Pottsville, Mechanicsville, Port Carbon, Cumbola, New Philadelphia, Middleport, Tuscarora, Tamaqua, Coaldale, Hometown and McAdoo can work with St. Luke’s scheduling team so that appointments and testing will correspond with these stops.

STS Executive Director David Bekisz is pleased to turn a negative of the closing of the Schuylkill Mall into a positive to better serve the Eastern part of Schuylkill County. The route meets the need to help improve the quality of life for Schuylkill County residents by allowing them transportation to and from quality medical care.

“This is exciting for us,” Gursky added. “People now have the opportunity to ride the bus to see their doctors and visit the hospital. I’ve lived here my whole life and there’s never been a consistent fix bus route service o St Luke’s Miners Campus before for these communities. We are grateful to STS for making this happen for the people of Schuylkill County.”

Media Contact:

Sam Kennedy, Corporate Communications Director, 484-526-4134, samuel.kennedy@sluhn.org

About St. Luke’s

Founded in 1872, St. Luke’s University Health Network (SLUHN) is a fully integrated, regional, non-profit network providing services at seven hospitals and more than 270 outpatient sites in the greater Lehigh Valley. The network’s service area includes 10 counties: Lehigh, Northampton, Carbon, Schuylkill, Bucks, Montgomery, Berks and Monroe counties in Pennsylvania and Warren and Hunterdon counties in New Jersey. In partnership with Temple University, St. Luke’s created the region’s first and only regional medical school campus. Dedicated to advancing health education, St. Luke’s operates the nation’s oldest School of Nursing and 23 graduate medical educational programs and is considered a major teaching hospital – the only one in its region. Repeatedly, including 2017, St. Luke’s earned Truven’s 100 Top Major Teaching Hospital and 50 Top Cardiovascular Program designations, in addition to other honors for clinical excellence. St. Luke’s is a multi-year recipient of the Most Wired award recognizing the breadth of St. Luke’s information technology applications such as electronic medical records, telehealth, online scheduling and pricing information. St. Luke’s is also recognized as one of the state’s lowest cost providers.