{"id":93726,"date":"2026-01-22T16:35:11","date_gmt":"2026-01-22T16:35:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/93726\/"},"modified":"2026-01-22T16:35:11","modified_gmt":"2026-01-22T16:35:11","slug":"penn-state-health-increasing-surgery-options-for-children-in-berks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/93726\/","title":{"rendered":"Penn State Health increasing surgery options for children in Berks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Penn State Health is expanding pediatric specialty services at Penn State Health St. Joseph Medical Center.<\/p>\n<p>Pediatric surgeons from Penn State Health Golisano Children\u2019s Hospital, based at the system\u2019s flagship Milton S. Hershey Medical Center in Hershey, are offering presurgical appointments and performing general surgery and gastrointestinal surgical procedures at the Bern Township medical center.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" lazyautosizes lazyload\" alt=\"Dr. Rob Ricca, right, a pediatric surgeon at Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, traveled to Penn State Health St. Joseph Medical Center in Bern Township to perform a pediatric surgery Wednesday. (Courtesy of Jason Plotkin\/Penn State Health)\" width=\"1200\" data- src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/REG-L-StJoePediatricSurgery-01.jpg\" data-attachment-id=\"3409030\" \/>Dr. Rob Ricca, right, a pediatric surgeon at Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, traveled to Penn State Health St. Joseph Medical Center in Bern Township to perform a pediatric surgery Wednesday. (Courtesy of Jason Plotkin\/Penn State Health)<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis expansion represents the best of both worlds for Berks County families,\u201d Dr. Robert Ricca, chief of pediatric surgery at the Children\u2019s Hospital, said in a release. \u201cThey will have access to the expertise of pediatric surgeons from Penn State Health Golisano Children\u2019s Hospital, backed by the compassionate, experienced pediatric care team at St. Joseph Medical Center.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Following surgery, children needing inpatient care will be admitted to St. Joseph\u2019s pediatric inpatient unit.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe are pleased to welcome our colleagues from Penn State Health Golisano Children\u2019s Hospital and to work together to advance pediatric care in Berks County,\u201d said Dr. Kimberly Wolf, vice president and chief medical officer of St. Joseph. \u201cThis collaboration ensures the highest quality of pediatric surgical care is available to families in our community.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Penn State Health is expanding pediatric specialty services at Penn State Health St. Joseph Medical Center. Pediatric surgeons&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":93727,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[349,2567,1057,182,139,28,128,130,129,706],"class_list":{"0":"post-93726","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-reading","8":"tag-berks-county","9":"tag-bern-township","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-local-news","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-pennsylvania","14":"tag-reading-city","15":"tag-reading-city-headlines","16":"tag-reading-city-news","17":"tag-top-stories-reg"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93726","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93726"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93726\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/93727"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}