DELAWARE COUNTY, Pa. (KYW Newsradio) — The two remaining Crozer Health hospitals in Delaware County are closing, despite many efforts to keep them operating.
In bankruptcy court Monday, Prospect Medical Holdings, a private equity firm, filed a motion to shutter Crozer Health and all its outpatient facilities licensed with the hospital, including Crozer Chester Medical Center and Taylor Hospital.
Prospect filed for bankruptcy in January and was slated to close in March, but remained open through April after receiving a few lifeline extensions from Delaware County, the commonwealth, the Foundation of Delaware County and Penn Medicine.
According to a letter from Prospect obtained by our newsgathering partners at NBC10, the $5 million funding offer from the University of Pennsylvania Health System fell through last week.
“They had an asset for a disagreement ready to go. And in the final hours, Prospect wanted to be relieved of all the liability, and so the deal fell through," said Peggy Malone, president of the Crozer Chester Nurses Association. "This didn’t have to happen like this today, we didn’t have to look like this today. But prospect, in their greed, again in the last minute, would not be part of that agreement, and so it fell through."
Now, the money and credit are gone, there is no buyer, and more than 2,500 employees are expected to be laid off.
Malone says some of her colleagues are concerned about what will happen when their children have asthma attacks in the middle of the night — "to get them somewhere other than Crozer is 30 minutes away, and they are afraid that their children will die."
In a statement, the Delaware County Legislative Delegation said the American health care system, by far the most expensive in the world, is "fundamentally broken, and Crozer's saga sadly exemplifies this.
A bankruptcy hearing is scheduled for Tuesday at 2:30 p.m. There, a plan to begin closing the hospitals will be worked out. Sen. Tim Kearney says EMS transportation will be diverted starting Wednesday.
"Because this has been happening in slow motion, the county, I think in particular, has done a great job at planning and figuring out,” he said. “They had a series of work groups that were set up as sort of basically for the what-ifs situation, for EMS, there is actually a plan prepared for how to provide those services."
In a statement, Gov. Josh Shapiro said, “Prospect caused this crisis, and they must be held accountable for their reckless actions,” adding their conduct and mismanagement must be fully reviewed in the bankruptcy legal process to hold them to account under the law.
“We must ensure this never happens again by passing legislation to get private equity out of the health care business in Pennsylvania, as I proposed in my budget address earlier this year.”
Attorney General Dave Sunday echoed that sentiment on X, saying, “The Delaware County community, along with the heroic Crozer Health system staff, deserved a better outcome than the closure that commenced today.”
Delaware County says it is in the process of filing an objection to Prospect’s closure motion, which it says "is deeply inadequate and does not comply with local law."