LVHN Welcomes Eric Elgin, MD, as New Cardiology Chief

Lehigh Valley Health Network’s new chief of cardiology is an interventional cardiologist from the Reading area whose background includes receiving the Bronze Star for his service as an Army battalion surgeon during Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Eric Elgin, MD, officially joined LVHN and Lehigh Valley Heart and Vascular Institute on June 13.

Elgin served in multiple leadership capacities including chief of cardiology, director of interventional cardiology and medical staff president at Reading Hospital, the flagship, acute care hospital of Tower Health. He also served as director of the cardiovascular service line for Tower Health and has practiced in the Reading area since 2008.

He also serves as an adjunct clinical assistant professor of medicine at Jefferson Medical College and assistant professor of medicine at Drexel University College of Medicine. He has received multiple awards and recognitions for his work related to education.

Elgin completed his medical training at the University of Chicago before completing his internship, internal medicine residency and cardiovascular disease fellowship at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. He served as chief of medical residents at Walter Reed from July 1999-June 2000.

He completed an interventional cardiology fellowship at the University of Maryland Medical Center. He served at Camp Liberty in Iraq from 2005-2006 as the battalion surgeon for the 2-22 Infantry Battalion with the 10th Mountain Division.  

Elgin says he’ll be clinically active in his new role in addition to the administrative and programmatic side of the job.

He says each patient is special, with different needs and circumstances. He says making the patient experience as good and as seamless as possible is always the goal because the various aspects of medicine – from imaging to pharmaceuticals to insurance – are extremely complex. “It should always be as if you were taking care of your own mom,” he says.

Elgin says he’ll be working closely with Ronald Freudenberger, MD, Physician in Chief, Lehigh Valley Heart and Vascular Institute, to enhance an already leading-edge program.