Lankenau

There is just one way into Lankenau Hospital: a short road to Lancaster Avenue that accommodates visitors, vendors, 2,000 commuting employees, and ambulances hustling to the emergency room. But the hospital's plan to open a second access road through a residential area on Manoa Road has angered a determined group of neighbors, who plan to demonstrate again tonight at a 7:30 meeting of the Lower Merion Township Commissioners. Karen Gotlieb of the Penn Wynne Civic Association said that allowing hospital traffic through her neighborhood would endanger children who use Penn Wynne Park and "crack our quiet community open like a walnut.

As Jeanette Vergis peered through the window of the intensive-care unit last year at her newborn son, William, she could see Doylestown Hospital's nurses were keeping close tabs on the fluids entering his body through intravenous tubes. Little did she know that the hospital recently had begun paying close attention to the tubes themselves. Three years ago, Doylestown started buying IV tubes, catheters and other products made from plastics that may be safer for patients and better for the environment.

Lankenau Hospital in Wynnewood announced yesterday that it would break ground tomorrow on a medical education center paid for, in part, with a $10 million grant from the Annenberg Foundation of St. Davids. Construction of the three-story education center - to be named the Walter and Leonore Annenberg Conference Center for Medical Education - will cost $11.2 million. More than half that, $6.5 million, comes from the Annenberg grant with the remainder from the hospital and its foundation and a $500,000 grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts.

The battle for heart patients in Southeastern Pennsylvania - and for the high reimbursements those patients generate - is intensifying with a suburban hospital planning to add transplants to its cardiac-surgery programs. This summer, Lankenau Hospital in Lower Merion will begin offering transplants to patients suffering from heart failure. And Thomas Jefferson University Hospital - which, like Lankenau, is a member of the Jefferson Health System - is expected to follow its suburban sister.

A public dispute between Independence Blue Cross and anesthesiologists at three Main Line hospitals has some patients concerned that they may wind up paying more out of their own pockets. Independence recently sent letters telling its members who live near Bryn Mawr, Lankenau and Paoli Hospitals that United Anesthesia, an independent physician group affiliated with those hospitals, had terminated on Feb. 1 its contract to accept Independence reimbursement for services. It is not the first time a spat over health-care reimbursement in Philadelphia has bubbled into public view.

As the weather turned warmer and then colder again late last month, the emergency department at Chester County Hospital was getting busier. "We are beginning to see a lot of respiratory infections ... the children are brought in over the weekends, the adults come in during the week," said Anne-Marie Guthrie, an emergency department educator at the hospital. The increase in patient volume, said Teresa Rougeaux, hospital spokeswoman, is due to two factors: the growth of Chester County and the increase in the elderly population.

Alice Strine, a resident of Rose Valley, a former educator, and a lawyer, was presented with the 2001 Athena Award at the Women In Business Expo luncheon on Thursday at the Corporate Events Center at Drexelbrook in Drexel Hill. The annual award recognizes individuals who have achieved excellence in their careers and what the event organizers call community work in assisting women "in attaining their full potential. " The award was cosponsored this year by the Delaware County Chamber of Commerce and Meissner Chevrolet-Oldsmobile.

Who should attend the monthly women-in-business network lunches at the Delaware County Chamber of Commerce? "Any woman that's working, probably," said Kathy Dunn of Ridley Township, president and owner of Delaware Valley Fire Equipment in Folsom. Dunn is chairwoman of the chamber network and on the chamber's women-in-business expo committee, which is planning a daylong expo Dec. 7 at Drexelbrook Catering in Drexel Hill. The network lunches, usually brown-bag affairs, feature a different speaker and topic each month.

Doctors will keep delivering babies at Lankenau Hospital and mending hearts at Bryn Mawr Hospital while taking open-heart surgery into Chester County, under a long-range plan that Main Line Health officials are presenting at community meetings this summer. The 10-year strategic plan sets aside a controversial 1996 proposal to consolidate heart surgery at Lankenau, in Wynnewood, and move Lankenau's obstetrical services to Bryn Mawr. Officials also foresee investing $100 million at Lankenau to build a new emergency department, expand obstetrical and cardiovascular services, and upgrade intensive-care facilities, said Barry Rabner, president of Main Line Hospitals, a part of the system.

The owner of one of the largest funeral homes in Burlington County has filed a lawsuit to keep Pemberton Township from becoming a two-hearse town, at least for now. Lankenau Funeral Home, the sole mortuary in the township, wants a Superior Court judge to block a competitor's plans to open a funeral business on the same street, Lakehurst Road, a quarter-mile away. The lawsuit, filed last week, contends that the Zoning Board should not have approved a use variance for John D. Moore, who is renovating the former Fat Rocks Bar for use as a funeral home.