How Crozer Health’s closure will impact a Pennsylvania county

The looming closure of Crozer Health will make it harder for those who need access to care, local officials say.

Prospect Medical Holdings is closing Crozer Health and its two hospitals in Delaware County, Pennsylvania. Local officials say it's going to make it harder for residents to get the care they need.

Prospect Medical Holdings, the owner of Crozer Health, said this week it is closing the system down after efforts to find another buyer were unsuccessful. Crozer operates two hospitals - Crozer-Chester Medical Center and Taylor Hospital - and other care sites in Delaware County, part of the Philadelphia suburbs. A few ambulatory and imaging centers will remain open, Prospect said.

Dr. Monica Taylor, chairwoman of the Delaware County Council, says the loss of Crozer adds to the healthcare challenges for the county, which is home to more than 584,000 people. Prospect previously shut down two other hospitals in the last few years.

Now, as Taylor says, the county, which had six hospitals just a few years ago, will soon have only two hospitals. Crozer closed Delaware County Memorial Hospital and Springfield Hospital in 2022.

“The impact to our entire community is going to be felt for a long time, and the access to health care is going to be limited,” Taylor tells Chief Healthcare Executive®.

“There's going to be ripple effects,” she says. “It's going to cause longer lines in our two remaining ERs, less access. People who are in critical need of emergency services are going to have to wait longer to get to those locations.”

• Read more: With Crozer Health closing, nearby hospitals prepare to see more patients

While Delaware County is close to Philadelphia, that doesn’t necessarily mean it will be easy for those who need to get to a hospital, particularly in an emergency. Many Delaware County residents will now be 30 to 40 minutes, or more, from the nearest hospital.

Crozer-Chester Medical Center sits in Chester, a small city of 33,000 where nearly one in three residents is in poverty, according to Census data. When the medical center closes, it’s going to place a hardship on many residents who don’t have reliable transportation, Taylor says. Workers rallied outside the medical center Tuesday in a desperate plea to save the facility.

Chester does have a federally qualified health center and an urgent care facility, but when Crozer Health closes, she says, “There’s not primary care physicians.”

“There's just very limited healthcare access,” Taylor says. “And this community has limited transportation, all of these different barriers, and now they're going to have to travel 45 minutes to get to a hospital if they need help or services. The throughput in that hospital is really high because there is no other access to healthcare besides that hospital. And so when you see something like that go away, it's going to just be devastating that community.”

In the wake of Crozer Health’s closure, Chester Mayor Stefan Roots signed an emergency declaration to respond more quickly and position the city to receive assistance from the state and federal government. The declaration takes effect Wednesday morning.

“City Council and I are devastated by this crisis, and we are taking every possible step to address the negative impact this closure will have on the City of Chester and its residents,” Roots said in a statement.

Dr. Monica Taylor, chairwoman of the Delaware County Council, said the closure of Crozer Health reduces healthcare access for the county's residents. The system is also one of the county's biggest employers.

Facility challenges

Delaware County officials have criticized Prospect Medical Holdings for the move to close, and private equity more broadly for its management of Crozer’s facilities.

“Prospect has not been a good partner in this process, and they have stripped the hospital of everything, and have taken all that they could from it, and then now they're in bankruptcy,” Taylor says.

She also says Crozer’s facilities are in need of significant upgrades, and the deferred maintenance of the facilities also impeded efforts to find a new buyer. Pennsylvania lawmakers representing the county also have cited that as a problem in failing to find a partner to acquire Crozer.

“The infrastructure, the equipment, the buildings … they did nothing for the hospital, so that made it really difficult to find a partner to come in with a hospital in that state,” Taylor says.

Prospect Medical Holdings filed for bankruptcy in January, with the company listing debts of more than $400 million. State lawmakers and Delaware County put up millions to keep Crozer Health operating while the search continued for another buyer, but Prospect said it had no alternative but to shut the system down.

“Unfortunately, we were unable to reach a viable alternative,” Prospect said in a statement. “At this time, the focus at Crozer Health remains on seamlessly transitioning patients to other health facilities so that they can continue to receive the critical, uninterrupted care they require, and to support Crozer Health team members as they seek to identify other employment opportunities.”

In addition to the other challenges in saving Crozer Health, Taylor and state lawmakers cited the possibility of reduced federal aid for healthcare and research. Hospitals nationwide have worried about the potential of cuts aimed at Medicaid.

With those factors in the mix, it made it harder to find another organization willing to take over Crozer.

“It does play a role,” Taylor says. “There's just so much uncertainty at the federal level, especially when you think about Medicaid, Medicare funding, and you look at the payer mix in the Crozer Chester system, that is a big factor. And so yes, the uncertainty of what's to come, and what the funding will look like, did play a role. But I do think that the bigger role was just the state that the system was left in by Prospect.”

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro issued a statement expressing his disappointment in Crozer's closure.

“Prospect Medical Holdings, the for-profit owner of Crozer Health, pillaged these hospitals for their own gain – and today, we see the result of their greed and mismanagement with the announced closure and loss of critical health care services for the people of Delaware County," Shapiro said in a statement.

Workers chose to ‘stay and serve’

Crozer Health is also one of the biggest employers in Delaware County, with more than 3,000 people working for the system. Some have worked for Crozer for 35 to 40 years, and most are residents of Delaware County. Now, they’ll have to look for work.

Taylor lauds the dedication of Crozer’s staff, who remained with the system under trying circumstances.

“They just care so much about the community, and they are amazing healthcare providers, and they have just been there for so long, and they know the community that they serve,” Taylor says.

“And they could have left at other points in time,” she adds. “We have a shortage of healthcare workers across the country. They could have gone, but they stayed because it was really important to them to stay and serve that community, and they held out hope that we were going to be able to figure out a solution to keep the hospital open. So I feel really bad for those individuals, just understanding how significant this impact is going to be for our entire community.”