Department of Emergency Medicine Information

The Emergency Medicine department at LVHN is part of one of Pennsylvania's largest teaching hospitals, offering many unique resources for resident education. Our ER residents have the opportunity to train at both the Cedar Crest and Muhlenberg sites. We have a children’s Emergency Department and see about 34,000 pediatric patients in our emergency rooms. We have a higher than national average acuity of patients with about 7 percent to 9 percent requiring ICU admission. As a resident, you will be involved with award-winning national leaders as your attending physicians. Department highlights include:

• An emergency medicine team that cares for more than 140,000 patients each year. The emergency department at Cedar Crest has more than 89,000 patient visits per year. LVH-Muhlenberg is a community hospital located about 15 miles from the Cedar Crest site. The emergency department at this site has more than 59,000 patient visits a year.
• A large health network that is both a community hospital and a regional referral center. LVHN has more than 950 beds in operation.
• The department at LVH-Cedar Crest operates the state's first Level I Trauma Center. It is one of four Level I trauma centers in Pennsylvania with additional qualifications in pediatric trauma. LVH-Muhlenberg recently gained status as a Level II trauma center in 2020.
• LVH-Cedar Crest provides the region’s only Children’s Hospital and PICU. ER residents train in the pediatric emergency room and the pediatric ICU.
• An aeromedical transport system that conducts flights for our regional Level I trauma center
• The George E. Moerkirk Emergency Medicine Institute, which trains more than 10,000 students annually and uses sophisticated teaching tools that include a human patient simulator. Founded in 1987 by the late Dr. George E. Moerkirk, the Institute is the area's primary training facility for emergency medicine. The GEM-Emergency Medicine Institute staff at Lehigh Valley Hospital consists of four program coordinators, two administrative secretaries and more than 300 adjunct faculty members. The training center currently utilizes 8 adult, 4 pediatric and 1 infant simulators for the delivery of education at the institute.