St. Luke’s University Hospital has been named one of the 100 best hospitals in the U.S. for three consecutive years.

The Lehigh Valley has been featured in a 24-page feature in American Way, the in-flight magazine of American Airlines, the largest airline in the world. Below is a portion of a story called “Global Impact,” which highlights the various regions, companies and economic trends of the Lehigh Valley. This particular excerpt focuses on region’s healthcare sector. The full story and the rest of the Spotlight Lehigh Valley feature can be found online here.

More Lehigh Valley residents work in healthcare than any other industry, with nearly 30,000 people on the books of the region’s two largest employers, Lehigh Valley Health Network and St. Luke’s University Health Network.

The former of these has been expanding in recent years, with a series of mergers adding new hospitals and outpatient centers to a network that already included such facilities as the region’s only children’s hospital, while it is advancing its commitment to “growing strong families” with this summer’s opening of a new $93.6-million family health pavilion on its Lehigh Valley Hospital–Muhlenberg campus in Bethlehem.

Says president and CEO Dr. Brian Nester, “It is our vision to build on our foundation as a premier academic community health system and become an innovative population health leader that creates superior quality and value for the patients and communities we serve.”

Meanwhile, St. Luke’s University Hospital has been named one of the 100 best hospitals in the U.S. for three consecutive years by Truven Health Analytics. The network is also notable for training more physicians, nurses and other allied health care providers than any other area institution, with its medical school, affiliated with Temple University, graduating its third class this spring.

“Medical science and technology changes daily,” says president and CEO Richard Anderson. “By having a medical school and also physician residencies, these are younger people who are aspiring to learn and grow, who bring a certain passion and thirst for knowledge that challenges those around them.”

Visit here to read the rest of this story and to download the rest of the Spotlight Lehigh Valley feature in American Way.