The fire that shuttered Lehigh Valley Hospital-Dickson City last week reignited anxieties about the region’s pronounced health care capacity challenges briefly assuaged by the announcement days earlier of a deal that apparently saved Commonwealth Health’s Scranton hospitals from closing.
It also underscored the importance of extensive and ultimately fruitful local efforts in recent years to facilitate an ownership change that keeps Commonwealth’s Regional Hospital of Scranton and its Moses Taylor Hospital campus in the city open, local officials said.
Those efforts finally came to fruition earlier this month when the nonprofit Tenor Health Foundation completed its acquisition of Commonwealth and the system’s Scranton hospitals, Wilkes-Barre General Hospital and other health care assets. Tenor announced the completed transaction Monday, just two days before the Dickson City hospital fire broke out late Wednesday, forcing the emergency evacuation and relocation of patients to other nearby hospitals.
Workers discuss plans outside Lehigh Valley Hospital in Dickson City on Wednesday, Feb. 5, 2026, after a significant fire forced the evacuation of the hospital. (CHAD SEBRING/STAGG PHOTO)
Commonwealth, now owned by Tenor, was there to help meet that demand, as was Geisinger, the system many worried would be unable to absorb the influx of patients prompted by the potential closures of Regional and Moses Taylor had the Tenor deal collapsed. And while it’s unclear how long the Dickson City hospital might remain closed in the wake of Wednesday’s blaze, Geisinger said Friday the fire there “reinforces the fact that greater access to hospital services is urgently needed in Lackawanna County and northeastern Pennsylvania.”
Geisinger, which plans a major expansion of Geisinger Community Medical Center in Scranton’s Hill Section to help mitigate inpatient and emergency department capacity challenges, made a similar case last month when, amid surging respiratory virus activity, its hospitals in Lackawanna and Luzerne counties were operating above capacity at historic levels not seen even during the heights of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Whether an unexpected emergency that displaces patients or residents in our community, major vehicle incidents or severe weather events that increase patient volumes, surges in respiratory illness that drive high occupancy rates or other situations that place extraordinary pressure on health care providers, there are several scenarios that could overwhelm hospitals and first-response services in our region, if we don’t expand access to strong, reliable care,” Geisinger said in its statement Friday. “Our community is resilient and responded well. But every day our hospitals are operating near or over 100% capacity creates a risk for our communities.”
Registered nurses work in the emergency room hallway at Geisinger Community Medical Center in Scranton Friday, January 16, 2026. (SEAN MCKEAG / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER)
“At this rate, there will come a time when we are forced to rely on alternative sites of care and less-than-ideal patient circumstances,” the statement said. “Our patients, their families and the entire region deserve better.”
The painful irony of losing the Dickson City hospital even temporarily so soon after apparently saving Regional and Moses Taylor is not lost on officials who celebrated the Tenor deal as a lifeline. State Rep. Bridget Kosierowski, D-114, Waverly Twp., said “the irony is massive.”
“It does reinforce the critical need in our community to have access for emergency care,” Kosierowski, a longtime registered nurse, said Friday. “Regional and then GCMC, thank God they were open, but they are already at maximum capacity, so for us to now lose access to (the Dickson City emergency room) — albeit a smaller emergency room and not one that’s a trauma center — that’s the landscape that we have to navigate.”
Still, Kosierowski and others emphasized that Wednesday’s crisis at Lehigh Valley Hospital-Dickson City could have been worse had Regional not been open to take evacuated patients.
In working to help facilitate a deal to safeguard Regional and Moses Taylor, U.S. Rep. Rob Bresnahan, R-8, Dallas Twp., said Thursday, “I think we all as a region recognized the pinch point and what it would have meant” if the Commonwealth hospitals closed.
“We knew that there was going to be a pinch point and I think that’s why the community rallied so hard to save the two, specifically, Scranton hospitals,” he said. “Because health care, these hospitals, have just been front and center for so long, and then to see how quickly an entire hospital can … be put out of service, it just shows how imperative making sure our hospital health care infrastructure remains strong in northeastern Pennsylvania (is).”
Regional Hospital of Scranton in Scranton Thursday, January 29, 2026. (SEAN MCKEAG / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER)
The congressman said “we’re just eternally grateful” that all the area hospitals that received patients were able to meet that acute need.
Scranton Mayor Paige Gebhardt Cognetti, who seeks the Democratic nomination to challenge Bresnahan in this year’s midterm elections, expressed a similar sentiment.
“On the positive side, Regional is open and should remain open so (I’m) grateful that Tenor was able to make that purchase … and I know that the hospitals, first responders were all in very, very close touch (Wednesday) night to make sure that everyone got placed,” she said. “I think we’ve been operating for years now in a state of uncertainty and worrying about capacity, so we’ll do everything that we can from the city side and our coordination side to make sure that the ER capacity is able to be absorbed.”
Cognetti’s administration proposed and a prior city council narrowly approved late last year zoning changes to accommodate the major GCMC expansion planned in the Hill Section. It followed a contentious zoning battle in 2022 and 2023 that stymied Geisinger’s previous expansion plans for the hospital.
Lackawanna County Commissioners Thom Welby, Bill Gaughan and Chris Chermak also reflected on Wednesday’s fire and the region’s broader health care capacity challenges, with Gaughan specifically endorsing Geisinger’s planned expansion of GCMC.
Geisinger Community Medical Center on Mulberry St. in Scranton Tuesday, Nov. 11, 2025. (SEAN MCKEAG / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER)
“If council did not allow them to expand that would have been probably the most catastrophic decision in this region I’d say in the last 50 years, because they would have just had to build it someplace else, probably out of this area, and it would have just put a further strain on everything that we already have going on here,” he said. “I give them a lot of credit for having the foresight to be able to push that through even in the face of some opposition, but it was for the greater good.”
Welby, meanwhile, said “we are so grateful and thankful that all the parties that worked together to rescue our (Commonwealth) hospitals … were able to do it,” echoing others who believe failure on that front would have made Wednesday’s situation in Dickson City even more difficult. He also expressed gratitude for the health care workers and first responders who worked to ensure the safety of Dickson City hospital patients, their families and others as the fire burned.
No one was injured in the blaze.
Crews rush to a fire at Lehigh Valley Hospital – Dickson City at about 9:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 5, 2026. Authorities on Thursday morning continued to investigate the fire at Lehigh Valley Hospital-Dickson City that sent flames shooting from the roof and required the evacuation of 77 patients relocated to other area hospitals. (COLIN GILDEA/NEPA Fire Photography)
Chermak said Wednesday’s incident “shows just how critically important it is” to keep the Commonwealth hospitals open, but stressed that would have been true with or without the Dickson City hospital fire.
“It just goes to show you that anything can happen at any time and we can’t be without these facilities,” he said.
Tenor Health Foundation CEO Radha Savitala also provided a statement Friday.
“Our hearts are with the patients, caregivers, and first responders affected by the fire in Dickson City,” she said. “Moments like this remind us that Regional Hospital of Scranton and Moses Taylor Hospital are more than buildings, they truly serve as lifelines for the communities they support.
“We were privileged to care for patients who were displaced by the fire, and this reinforces the importance of having strong hospitals in our local communities,” Savitala continued. “Tenor Health Foundation and Commonwealth Health now share a mission to ensure these hospitals have the capacity, readiness, and resources to care for patients during both routine care and unexpected emergencies.”