With Crozer Health’s hospitals closing, a nurse asks: ‘What about tomorrow?’
Prospect Medical Holdings is shutting down Crozer Health and its two hospitals in the Philadelphia suburbs. Staff fear the impact on residents needing care.
When Peggy Malone saw the Temple Health helicopter land, she could no longer contain her emotions.
Peggy Malone, a nurse at Crozer-Chester Medical Center, worries about the loss of services with the closure of Crozer Health. The system operates two hospitals: Crozer-Chester and Taylor Hospital.
A nurse at Crozer-Chester Medical Center, Malone and other staff and lawmakers gathered outside the hospital Tuesday in a desperate appeal to save Crozer Health. Prospect Medical Holdings, which owns Crozer, said this week that it’s shutting down the system and its two hospitals in the Philadelphia suburbs, Crozer-Chester and Taylor Hospital.
The Temple helicopter had landed just as the press conference was ending. Malone knew what it meant.
“They were coming to get our patients,” she tells Chief Healthcare Executive. “And I think I said I hadn't cried in all these months until then, because that meant it was real, that they really were taking our patients from us.”
Malone is president of the Crozer-Chester chapter of Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses & Allied Professionals. She’s participated in numerous rallies and testified before state lawmakers about the need to preserve Crozer Health.
She has worked at Crozer-Chester for nearly 38 years. She recognizes the reality of the impending closure of the system, and yet there’s still a part that doesn’t want to accept that her hospital will no longer be caring for patients.
“I believed until the very last second, and I will believe until the last patient leaves and they lock the doors, that we're staying open,” she says. “The devastation is going to be so widespread.”
‘Time matters’
Prospect Medical Holdings filed for bankruptcy in January, and said it had no alternative but to close Crozer Health after another buyer couldn’t be found. Prospect said in a court filing that it plans to begin diverting patients from the emergency departments of the two hospitals this week.
Trauma, surgical, obstetrics and gynecology, behavioral health, oncology, and outpatient services are also slated to be phased out this week. Ambulatory services are slated to end next week. A handful of ambulatory and imaging clinics are slated to remain open, Prospect said.
Malone is especially concerned about the lack of access to care for residents in Delaware County. For generations, Crozer-Chester Medical Center has served patients in Chester, a small city with a large percentage of residents with low incomes and no transportation. Many Chester residents take the bus or walk to the hospital, she says.
Other hospitals say they’re preparing for the influx of patients from Crozer Health, but Malone worries about the future.
“Everybody wants to take our patients right now,” she says.
“But the reality is, what happens tomorrow? Next week? Next month? Which is what I have said all along. These patients can't get anywhere else. They don't have the transportation,” Malone says.
With the impending closure of Crozer Health’s hospitals, Delaware County will have two remaining hospitals serving more than 584,000 residents: Mercy Fitzgerald Hospital, part of Trinity Health, and Riddle Memorial Hospital, part of Main Line Health.
Riddle is about 20 minutes from Crozer-Chester, and that’s a longer trip for patients in emergencies, she says.
With patients in crisis now facing a longer trip to a hospital, Malone says, “They'll bleed to death. They'll lose brain function. In health care, time matters, and we are going to prolong the time now for people to be able to receive quick health care and, and definitely, lives are going to be lost.”
Malone says she’s concerned about the impact on patients having babies having to travel farther to deliver.
“I'm really worried. We have a very young population who have babies, and so when you have young girls having babies, the prenatal care isn't great,” Malone says.
With some patients not always getting much care before delivery, Malone says the medical center’s emergency room regularly issues a “code pink,” indicating a patient is about to give birth.
“Our team of labor and delivery nurses and NICU nurses, everybody runs to that emergency room, and I can't tell you the countless lives that have been saved, both young moms and babies because they had quick, immediate care,” Malone says. “And that's what we've been screaming this whole time, is that's what's going away for people, is quick, immediate health care.”
Aiding patients in need
Malone is one of more than 3,000 Crozer Health workers that stand to lose their jobs, and she’s worried about her colleagues finding work.
Despite the threat of imminent closure, and even after Prospect filed for bankruptcy in January, most of Crozer Health’s workers stayed on the job.
Dr. Monica Taylor, chairwoman of the Delaware County Council, praised the Crozer Health staff for continuing to work even under challenging circumstances.
“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,” Taylor says.
When a hospital or health system is in distress and facing the threat of closure, it’s common for staff to look for the exits.
Malone says Crozer’s staff didn’t want to leave.
“When I tell you I truly love these patients and the population that I have had the privilege and honor of serving, I mean that from the bottom of my heart,” she says.
Nurses would try and help those patients who were facing real hardships, such as bringing in clothes so patients had something to wear.
Doctors and nurses would regularly give food, snacks or a little cash to patients who were homeless “because we don't know where they get their next meal,” Malone says.
“They slipped money in an envelope when patients were leaving, because we were discharging them to a homeless shelter, and we were afraid when they got to the shelter, they'd no longer be serving dinner,” she says. “I mean, every single employee there can tell you a story of when they've done that. That's what is the hardest part for us, is we truly, truly care and love these patients.”
Local and county officials are working to find ways to bring in more healthcare services into Delaware County, including primary care services to help fill those gaps.
But they say they won’t replace the two hospitals, and Malone says additional help won’t be here soon enough.
“It'll be too late,” she says. “It'll be too late for the mom who has a child having an asthma attack tomorrow. If we are closed, it's too late. How many mothers’ hearts are going to break because Crozer is not there to save their children? And as a mom, that's where I relate.”
