MCCANDLESS TWP — The past two years were full of changes for UPMC Passavant, with adjustments due to the COVID-19 pandemic and advancements in services offered in Cranberry Township and elsewhere throughout the network.

As for the latter, Passavant's service expansions have surpassed what its leaders planned two years ago.

“We over-promised, and boy did we deliver,” Passavant president Susan Hoolahan said in a Thursday news briefing. “Not only did we bring all these advances to life through substantial investment and focused recruitment of the very top talent in our country, we did actually much more than we set out to do.”

Since August 2019, Passavant has brought additional services and specialty care to Cranberry, both at UPMC Passavant-Cranberry and the Lemieux Sports Complex.Dr. Rich Beigi, president of Magee-Womens Hospital, said the Cranberry area — with a “young, growing population” — needs “robust” OB-GYN care.“We expanded to meet those needs, expanding a robust women and children's services inside the UPMC (Lemieux) Sports Complex,” Beigi said. “It's a comprehensive OB-GYN center comprised of multiple physician offices and specialty services.”He added the volume of patients seen in the sports complex continues to grow.Passavant also opened a Children's Express Care at Lemieux last summer, offering walk-in urgent care for pediatrics.Lisa Bryan-Morris, Passavant's chief nursing officer, said both Cranberry and McCandless Passavant hospitals have expanded pediatric emergency services.“Our partnership with UPMC Children's (Hospital of Pittsburgh) provides a higher level of emergency care through advanced telemedicine technology, connecting Passavant providers with Children's specialists in real time while the patient is in our emergency departments in both Passavant and Cranberry,” she said.The changes to Passavant emergency care don't stop there. COVID-19 thrust additional changes into both the McCandless and Cranberry locations, with monoclonal antibody treatment for COVID-19 available at both hospitals.Bryan-Morris said the availability of that treatment — which binds a COVID-19 antibody to the virus to either prevent or reduce the symptoms of infection — allows area patients to receive that care nearby, rather than forcing them drive to Pittsburgh.

The women and children's services center in the Lemieux complex has led to an increase in patients seeking imaging and care.“Not only does (the Lemieux center's services) pull from northern Allegheny County, but it pulls from Butler, Beaver and even further north,” Beigi said. “We're seeing nice patient flow through that area and the demand continues.”In July, the McCandless Passavant hospital opened its new UPMC Magee-Womens Imaging Center, which utilizes many of the same technologies available in the Lemieux complex.The technologies available in McCandless include a state-of-the-art mammography unit that takes both two- and three-dimensional images as well as a DEXA scanner to measure bone density.

In addition to the advanced response unit, which will assist local emergency medical services providers with complex calls, a number of changes are coming to the Cranberry hospital, including “additional space and capacity” at the Hillman Cancer Center at Passavant-Cranberry to provide additional oncological care.“The fully renovated center will create an improved environment for patients who receive oncology treatments and are in need of consultations,” said Dr. Samer Tohme, a surgical oncologist at the Hillman Cancer Center.Beigi said leaders at the Cranberry hospital — which he described as both the breast surgery and reconstruction center as well as its specialty center for orthopedic and sports medicine procedures — will look for ways to expand its surgical footprint in both women's and orthopedic surgery.