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  • Robert E. Booth Jr., pioneering knee surgeon and celebrated antiquarian, has died at 80

    Robert E. Booth Jr., pioneering knee surgeon and celebrated antiquarian, has died at 80

    Robert E. Booth Jr., 80, of Gladwyne, renowned pioneering knee surgeon, former head of the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at Pennsylvania Hospital, celebrated antiquarian, professor, researcher, writer, lecturer, athlete, mentor, and volunteer, died Thursday, Jan. 15, of complications from cancer at his home.

    Born in Philadelphia and reared in Haddonfield, Dr. Booth was a top honors student at Haddonfield Memorial High School, Princeton University, and what is now the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. He was good at seeing things differently and went on to design new artificial knee joint implants and improved surgical instruments, serve as chief of orthopedics at Pennsylvania Hospital, and mentor celebrated surgical staffs at Jefferson Health, Aria Health, and Penn Medicine.

    He joined with two other prominent doctors to cofound the 3B orthopedic private practice in the late 1990s and, over 50 years until recently, performed more than 50,000 knee replacements, more than anyone, according to several sources. Last March 26, he did five knee replacements on his 80th birthday.

    In a tribute, fellow physician Alex Vaccaro, president of Rothman Orthopaedic Institute, said: “He restored mobility to thousands, pairing unmatched technical mastery with a compassion that patients never forgot.”

    In a 1989 story about his career, Dr. Booth told The Inquirer: “It’s so much fun and so gratifying and so rewarding to see what it means to these people. You don’t see that in the operating room. You see that in the follow-ups. That’s the fun of being a surgeon.”

    Friends called him “a legend in his profession” and “a friend to everyone” in online tributes. He was known to check in with patients the night before every surgery, and a colleague said online: “Patients were all shocked by his compassion.”

    Dr. Booth was also praised for his organization and collaboration in the operating room. “His OR was a clinic in team work and efficiency,” a former colleague said on LinkedIn.

    He told Medical Economics magazine in 2015: “I love fixing things. I like the mechanics and the positivity of something assembled and fixed.”

    This article about Dr. Booth’s practice was published in The Inquirer in 2015.

    His procedural innovations reduced infection rates and increased success rates. They were scrutinized in case studies by Harvard University and others, and replicated by colleagues around the world. Some of the instruments he redesigned, such as the Booth retractor, bear his name.

    He was president of the Illinois-based Knee Society in the early 2000s and earned its 2026 lifetime achievement award. In an Instagram post, colleagues there called him “one of the most influential leaders in the history of knee arthroplasty.”

    Dr. Booth replaced both knees at once on a 52-year old in 2015.

    He was a professor of orthopedics at Penn’s school of medicine, Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, and the old Allegheny University of Health Sciences. He loved language and studied poetry on a scholarship in England after Princeton and before medical school at Penn. He told his family that his greatest professional satisfaction was using both his “manual and linguistic skills.”

    He was onetime president of the International Spine Study Group and volunteered with the nonprofit Operation Walk Denver to provide free surgical care for severe arthritis patients in Panama, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and elsewhere. Colleagues at Operation Walk Denver noted his “remarkable spirit, profound expertise, and unwavering commitment” in a Facebook tribute.

    This story about Dr. Booth’s charitable work abroad appeared in The Inquirer in 2020.

    At home, Dr. Booth and his wife, Kathy, amassed an extensive collection of Shaker and Pennsylvania German folk art. They curated five notable exhibitions at the Philadelphia Antiques Show and were recognized as exceptional collectors in 2011 by the Philadelphia Society for the Preservation of Landmarks.

    He lectured widely about art and antiques, and wrote articles for Magazine Antiques and other publications. He was president of the American Folk Art Society and active at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Canterbury Shaker Village in New Hampshire.

    “He was larger than life for sure,” said his daughter, Courtney.

    Robert Emrey Booth Jr. was born March 26, 1945, in Philadelphia. He was the salutatorian of his senior class and ran track and field at Haddonfield High School.

    Dr. Booth enjoyed time with his family.

    He earned a bachelor’s degree in English at Princeton in 1967, won a letter on the swimming and diving team, and played on the school’s Ivy League championship lacrosse team as a senior. He wrote his senior thesis about poet William Butler Yeats and returned to Philadelphia from England at the suggestion of his father, a prominent radiologist, to become a doctor. He graduated from Penn’s medical school in 1972.

    “I always liked the intellectual side of medicine,” he told Medical Economics. “And once I got to see the clinical side, I was pretty well hooked.”

    3B Orthopedics moves to Aria Health from Pennsylvania Hospital

    He met Kathy Plummer at a wedding, and they married in 1972 and had a daughter, Courtney, and sons Robert and Thomas. They lived in Society Hill, Haddonfield, and Gladwyne.

    Dr. Booth liked to ski and play golf. He was an avid reader and enjoyed time with his family on Lake Kezar in Lovell, Maine.

    “He was quite the person, quite the partner, and quite the husband,” his wife said, “and I’m so proud of what we built together.”

    Dr. Booth and his wife, Kathy, married in 1972.

    In addition to his wife and children, Dr. Booth is survived by six grandchildren and other relatives.

    A private celebration of his life is to be held later.

    Donations in his name may be made to Operation Walk Denver, 950 E. Harvard Ave., Suite 230, Denver, Colo. 80210.

  • Philly-area bariatric surgery programs face upheaval amid growing GLP-1 use for weight loss

    Philly-area bariatric surgery programs face upheaval amid growing GLP-1 use for weight loss

    At Roxborough Memorial Hospital in Philadelphia, surgeon Piotr Krecioch has his hands full launching a program offering surgical interventions to treat obesity.

    One in three Philadelphians are living with obesity, putting them at higher risk of chronic conditions like diabetes and heart disease, but these days fewer are seeking the bariatric surgical procedures long considered a leading medical treatment for the condition.

    “I’m trying to start a bariatric program at probably the worst possible time you can ever imagine because everybody’s losing patients, and I don’t even have a patient to begin with,” Krecioch said.

    Tower Health’s Reading Hospital recently closed its bariatric surgery program, and other local health systems have seen declines in weight-loss operations approach 50%.

    Independence Blue Cross, the Philadelphia region’s largest insurer, said the number of bariatric surgeries it paid for dropped by half in the five years ended June 30.

    Those shifts in the bariatric surgery landscape have followed the meteoric national rise in the use of GLP-1s and related drugs for weight loss.

    So far, the drugs have benefited patients by allowing them to avoid an invasive surgery. With bariatric surgery, people lose weight because the procedures restrict the amount of food a person can eat. Drugs in a class known as GLP-1s make people feel full longer.

    For hospitals, the upheaval in treatment options cuts into a profitable business line and adds to the financial pressure health systems have been experiencing since the pandemic.

    Despite the ever-increasing popularity of GLP-1s for weight loss like Novo Nordisk’s Ozempic and Wegovy and Eli Lilly’s Mounjaro and Zepbound, it’s too soon to write off bariatric surgery as an option, some doctors say.

    Insurers are imposing limits on coverage because of the long-term cost of the drugs compared to surgery, and doctors are watching for side effects that may emerge as more people take the drugs for longer periods of time.

    It’s not the first time a new technology has reduced surgical volumes.

    Whenever a less-invasive treatment has come along, “surgical volumes always have taken a beating,” said Prashanth R. Ramachandra, a bariatric and general surgeon at Trinity Health Mid-Atlantic’s Mercy Fitzgerald Hospital. Declines in peptic ulcer and open heart surgeries are past examples of the phenomenon, he said.

    Such industrywide moves away from profitable procedures can create financial challenges for individual clinics or independent hospitals, said Daniel Steingart, who leads the nonprofit healthcare practice at Moody’s, a major credit ratings agency.

    “But I also see it as an opportunity, because there’s other patients out there, there’s other services that can be provided. This is a matter of the management team being nimble,” he said.

    Sharp decline in bariatric surgeries

    National data show a 38% decline in bariatric surgeries from the beginning of 2024 through September, according to data firm Strata Decision Technology. Comparable local data were not available.

    A substantial portion of the drop is from patients who previously had bariatric surgery but regained weight, physicians say. In the past, they would have had a type of surgery called a revision. Now, those patients are more likely to start taking GLP-1s, local doctors said.

    Prashanth R. Ramachandra is a general and bariatric surgeon at Trinity Health Mid-Atlantic’s Mercy Fitzgerald Hospital in Darby.

    Only two Philadelphia-area health systems provided details on changes in bariatric surgery volumes in recent years as GLP-1s for weight loss took off.

    At the University of Pennsylvania Health System’s three Philadelphia hospitals, the annual number of bariatric surgeries has fallen by more than half, from a peak of 850 three or four years ago to around 400 in the year that ended June 30, said Noel Williams, a physician who leads Penn’s bariatric surgery program.

    At Mercy Fitzgerald in Darby, the number fell from an annual peak in the 220-230 range to about 125 last year, Ramachandra said.

    The volume at Mercy Fitzgerald was likely buoyed by the closure of the bariatric surgery program at nearby Crozer-Chester Medical Center in Upland.

    Tower did not provide details on the Reading closure, which was part of cutbacks Tower announced in early November. The program closed last month after a 60-day notice to the state health department.

    Main Line Health, which only offers bariatric surgery at Bryn Mawr Hospital, said surgeries have declined, but provided no details.

    Virtua Health did not provide comparable data but said that its Virtua Complete Weight Management Program, which opened in spring 2024 to expand into medication treatments, experienced a 35% increase in visits last year.

    The number of bariatric procedures is also down at Temple University Health System, but patients with complex conditions and more severe obesity are still coming to Temple for surgery, said David Stein, who is surgeon-in-chief at Temple University Hospital.

    To adapt to this rapid change in medicine, Temple is adopting a multidisciplinary approach to the disease, building on what is done in cancer care, Stein said.

    Jefferson Health did not respond to requests for information about its bariatric surgery program.

    How health systems are responding

    While full-scale closures like Reading’s are unusual, cutbacks are occurring broadly.

    When the bariatric surgeon at Penn Presbyterian Medical Center retired amid declining numbers of surgeries across the entire system, Penn did not replace him, Williams said.

    Penn does the procedures locally at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and at Pennsylvania Hospital.

    “If the numbers were to continue the way they are now,” Williams said, “we may want to consolidate into one of our hospitals in the city.”

    Outside of Philadelphia, Penn has bariatrics programs at Lancaster General Hospital and Penn Princeton Medical Center.

    After Jefferson Health acquired Einstein Healthcare Network in late 2021, it consolidated bariatric procedures at Jefferson Abington Hospital, according an Inquirer analysis of inpatient data through 2024 from the Pennsylvania Health Cost Containment Council.

    Jefferson did not respond to a request for information about the changes.

    Piotr Krecioch is a bariatric and general surgeon at Roxborough Memorial Hospital in Philadelphia.

    Not the end for bariatric surgery

    GLP-1s don’t mean the end of bariatric surgery, even though the procedures are not likely to return to previous peaks, physicians said.

    Some patients don’t respond to GLP-1s and others can’t tolerate them, which means they remain candidates for surgery, Williams said. Surgery is still recommended for patients who are considered severely obese, with body-mass indexes over 50, he added.

    Outcomes cannot yet be compared over the long-term. Ramachandra and other doctors are keeping their eye on the ratio of fat loss and muscle loss in patients taking GLP-1s compared to those who have bariatric surgery. Losing muscle can lead to falls and fractures.

    A study published last month in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that bariatric surgery is associated with a favorable ratio of fat loss.

    At Roxborough Memorial Hospital, Krecioch, who also works as a general surgeon, sounds optimistic as he works on his new program. He became a Roxborough employee in April 2024 after eight years at Mercy Fitzgerald, where he worked with Ramachandra.

    Krecioch’s strategy for years has been to offer weight management services in addition to surgery. Patients come for a GLP-1, giving him a chance to build a long-term relationship.

    “I have a feeling that these people are going to come back to my office,” he said. ”I’m gonna keep seeing them, and that they will actually convert to bariatric surgery at some point.”

    Editor’s note: This article has been updated with information from Temple University Health System.

  • 85,000 Pennie customers dropped health plans as tax credits shrank and costs spiked

    85,000 Pennie customers dropped health plans as tax credits shrank and costs spiked

    About 85,000 people who bought Pennie plans in 2025 did not renew for this year following the expiration of expanded tax credits that reduced what consumers had to pay, Pennsylvania’s Affordable Care Act marketplace announced Monday.

    That meant that 18% of previously enrolled Pennsylvania residents dropped their coverage as premiums doubled on average across the state, according to Pennie, the state’s Obamacare marketplace.

    Enrollment for 2026 totaled 486,000, down from 496,661 at the end of last year’s open enrollment period. For this year, roughly 79,500 newcomers to the exchange partially offset the people who dropped coverage.

    The agency warned, however, that the number of enrollees could continue declining for several months. There’s a three-month lag between when consumers stop paying premiums and coverage ends. Open enrollment ended Jan. 31.

    Pennsylvania already had more than 700,000 people without health insurance, according to the latest census data.

    The agency had predicted last summer that as many as 150,000 people would drop coverage if Congress did not renew the expanded tax credits that were adopted in 2021 during the coronavirus pandemic.

    New Jersey has not released final results for its ACA open enrollment period, which also ended Jan. 31.

    As of the start of January, 493,727 residents were signed up for 2026 health coverage with Get Covered New Jersey. That’s up slightly from the 481,151 people who were enrolled last year.

    Soaring costs for consumers

    Average out-of-pocket costs were expected to double on average for people who benefited from the enhanced tax credits, Pennie said last year.

    Under the ACA, people who earn less than 400% of the federal poverty level — about $64,000 for an individual and $132,000 for a family of four — are eligible for tax credits on a sliding scale, based on their income, to help offset the monthly cost of an insurance premium.

    That tax credit is part of the law, and therefore did not expire at the end of December. The change affects an expansion in 2021, when Congress increased financial assistance so that those buying coverage through an Obamacare marketplace do not pay more than 8.5% of their income.

    The expiration of the 8.5% cap means that a 60-year-old couple with household income of about $85,000 could see their premium triple to $22,600 this year from $7,225 last year, according to the nonprofit Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington.

    The tax credits were a key issue in the federal budget debate last year that ultimately led to the longest-ever government shutdown. Democrats wanted to permanently expand the enhanced subsidies, and Republicans refused.

    Weaker coverage

    About 33,000 more Pennie customers enrolled in plans that have lower monthly premiums, but typically come with high out-of-pocket costs in the form of deductibles and copays. That amounted to a 30% increase in the number of consumers choosing so-called Bronze plans, Pennie said.

    “As the costs of groceries, housing, utilities, and other necessities continue to rise, higher healthcare costs mean more people will delay care, skip treatments, or take on medical debt,” Antoinette Krause, executive director of the nonprofit advocacy group Pennsylvania Health Access Network, said in an email.

    Pennie noted that rural counties were particularly hard hit by coverage losses. Fifteen of the top 20 counties with the highest disenrollment on a percentage bases were rural, Pennie said.

    That could put more stress on rural hospitals if people have to resort more often to emergency departments for care and don’t have the means to pay.

    Inquirer staff writer Sarah Gantz contributed to this article.

  • Jefferson Health plans to boost capacity at the Abington Hospital emergency department

    Jefferson Health plans to boost capacity at the Abington Hospital emergency department

    Jefferson Health is boosting emergency department capacity at Abington Hospital to enable it to receive 100,000 visits annually, up from 80,000 now, the nonprofit health system said Tuesday.

    The department, which is also a Level II trauma center, will be named the Goodman Emergency Trauma Center in honor of an unspecified donation from Montgomery County residents Bruce and Judi Goodman. Bruce Goodman is a commercial real estate developer and a longtime Abington board member, Jefferson said.

    Jefferson, which acquired Abington in 2015, described the Goodman gift as the cornerstone of a $30 million ongoing fundraising campaign for the hospital’s emergency department.

    The project will reconfigure more than 24,000 square feet of existing clinical space and reallocate 10,000 additional square feet from a courtyard and a gift shop to the ED to expand capacity from 80 to 116 treatment spaces, Jefferson said.

    In November, Jefferson said it had closed Abington’s inpatient behavioral health unit to accommodate extra patients in its emergency department.

    Also last year, Jefferson announced $19 million in upgrades to the emergency department at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Center City. The system also added a 20-bed observation unit in the ED at Jefferson Einstein Philadelphia.

  • CHOP launches Philly-area autism therapy network in partnership with Soar Autism Centers

    CHOP launches Philly-area autism therapy network in partnership with Soar Autism Centers

    The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and Denver-based Soar Autism Centers have opened in Newtown the first of five planned early childhood autism centers in the Philadelphia region and expect the network could grow to more than 30 centers, officials said.

    The 50-50 joint venture is designed to reduce wait times for therapy and to make it easier for families to access multiple types of therapy at one location while remaining connected to CHOP specialists.

    “It can take a year to get into therapy on a regular basis,“ an extremely long time in a young child’s neurological development, Soar cofounder and CEO Ian Goldstein said.

    Such wait times continue to frustrate families despite dramatic growth in the autism-services sector over the last 15 years or so, as states mandated insurance coverage and diagnosis rates soared with more awareness and an expanded definition of autism.

    Nationally, applied behavioral analysis, commonly known as ABA therapy, has become popular for autism treatment, increasing nationally by 270% between 2019 and 2024, according to Trilliant Health, a Nashville data analysis firm. The volume of services provided locally — where companies including ABA Centers, Helping Hands Family, and NeurAbilities Healthcare have expanded — was not available.

    Philadelphia Eagles owner established the Lurie Autism Institute at Penn and CHOP

    The increase in diagnoses has outpaced the growth in available services, said Matthew Lerner, an autism expert at Drexel University, who is not involved with the newly launched CHOP-Soar Autism Centers.

    When Lerner moved to the Philadelphia region from Long Island in 2023 and started getting plugged into the autism network, a few clinicians here would ask if he could connect patients with services in New York.

    “I was coming from eastern Long Island, two hours east of New York City, and people were like, do you know anyone closer to you?” he recalled.

    CHOP’s road to a joint venture with Soar

    The freestanding, 10,000 square-foot clinic that opened on Jan. 5 in suburban Bucks County near CHOP Pediatric Primary Care Newtown has 35 to 40 rooms and an indoor playground for therapeutic uses.

    CHOP, among the largest children’s health systems in the country, has long been concerned about limited access to autism care in the region, said Steve Docimo, CHOP’s executive vice president for business development and strategy.

    The nonprofit has provided diagnostic services, but not the forms of therapy that the CHOP-Soar centers will offer. “The threshold to doing this on our own has always been high enough that it hasn’t been a pool that we’ve jumped in,” he said.

    CHOP was in talks with Soar for three years before agreeing to the 50-50 joint venture with the for-profit company. CHOP’s investment will be its share of the startup costs for CHOP-Soar locations.

    The partnership plan calls for five locations in the first two years. The partners did not say where the next four centers will be.

    Soar has 15 locations in the Denver area, which has about half the population of the Philadelphia region, Goldstein said.

    That comparison implies that the CHOP-Soar partnership could grow to 30 centers, Goldstein added. He thinks the region’s needs could support additional expansion, saying the total could reach “into the dozens.”

    The first CHOP-Soar Autism Center opened this month in Newtown. Shown here is the reception area.

    That’s assuming CHOP-Soar provides high quality care for kids, an appealing family experience, and a system of coordinated care: “There will be a need to do more than five, and I think we’re jointly motivated to do so,” Goldstein said.

    The CHOP-Soar approach

    Families seeking care for an autistic child typically have to go to different places to get all the types of therapy they need.

    Families “get behavioral analytics in one place, occupational therapy somewhere else, and speech language pathology in another place,” Docimo said.

    Soar brings all of that together in one center. “If it can be scaled, this will fill a gap in our region in a way that I think will work very well for these families,” he said.

    CHOP-Soar centers will emphasize early intervention and treat children through age six. “The brain has its greatest neuroplasticity” up to age 3, “so waiting a year is a really big deal,” Goldstein said. “You’re missing out on that opportunity to really influence the child’s developmental trajectory at a young age.”

    Some autism services providers focus on ABA therapy, which breaks social and self-care skills, for example, down into components and then works discretely on each.

    But Soar offers what Goldstein described as “integrated, coordinated care for the child.” That includes speech, occupational, and behavioral therapies.

    With CHOP, medical specialties, such as genetics, neurology, and gastrointestinal care, can be tied in as well, Goldstein said.

    It’s rare for autism providers to offer a wide variety of commonly needed services under one roof, said Lerner, who leads the A.J. Drexel Autism Institute’s Life Course Outcomes Research Program.

    He said Soar’s evidence-based, multidisciplinary approach has a lot to offer the region.

    “A person diagnosed with autism will have complex care needs throughout their life, and a one-size-fits-all, one-intervention approach will not work,” he said.

  • The new owner of Crozer-Chester Medical Center wants to restore hospital and emergency services

    The new owner of Crozer-Chester Medical Center wants to restore hospital and emergency services

    The new owner of the defunct Crozer-Chester Medical Center wants to restore hospital and emergency services to the 64-acre campus that straddles Chester and Upland Township in Delaware County.

    Newly formed Chariot Equities completed the $10 million purchase Wednesday. The for-profit entity said it expected within six months to have an agreement with a health system that would operate a “right-sized” hospital and emergency department at the facility that had been the county’s largest provider of those services before closing last year.

    The idea is then to open the first phase within two years, Chariot said in a statement.

    Chariot did not say how much it would spend on refurbishing Crozer-Chester, which had suffered from years of neglect under its two previous owners.

    Chariot’s partner at Crozer-Chester is Allaire Health Services, a Jackson, N.J.-based for-profit operator of nursing homes.

    The partners said they are in talks with regional and national nonprofit health systems regarding an operating partnership, but provided no details. The amount of money needed for the project would likely depend on what prospective tenants would want to do at the property.

    “Our belief in Delaware County’s future, and the community’s need for sustainable healthcare access, made this an effort worth committing to well before the finish line,” said Yoel Polack, Chariot’s founder and principal.

    Little is known about the new owners. Polack worked in healthcare real estate in the New York City area before setting his sights on redeveloping Crozer-Chester.

    Federal records list Allaire’s CEO Benjamin Kurland as an owner of 20 nursing homes, including three in the Philadelphia area. Chariot’s statement said Allaire owns a total of 29 facilities in five states.

    Philadelphia-area facilities associated with Kurland are the Center For Rehab & Nursing Washington Township, which was acquired from Jefferson Health; Riverview Estates Rehab & Senior Living Center in Riverton; and West Park Rehabilitation & Nursing Center in West Philadelphia.

    Local interest?

    Main Line Health has been involved in discussions about reopening emergency services at three former Crozer hospitals — Crozer-Chester Medical Center, Springfield Hospital, and Taylor Hospital — at the request of state lawmakers and the property owners, Ed Jimenez, CEO of Main Line Health, said Wednesday at a Riddle Hospital event.

    Jimenez said he would “entertain the concept” of restoring emergency services at one of the hospitals as part of a partnership with other health systems, but only if it can be done on a break-even basis.

    All three of the former hospital buildings visited by Main Line officials are in poor condition and were stripped of medical equipment after the closures. Main Line’s experts estimated it would cost between $15 million and $20 million just to make the emergency department at Taylor functional, Jimenez said.

    Riddle Hospital celebrates $4M in state funding to expand healthcare access in Delaware County

    ChristianaCare, Delaware’s largest health system, considered acquiring Crozer in 2022. Instead, it took a different path to expansion in Southeastern Pennsylvania. It is planning to open two micro-hospitals in Delaware County. The nonprofit system also took over five former Crozer outpatient locations. Its credit rating was recently downgraded by one notch because of lower profitability.

    The importance of Crozer-Chester

    Crozer-Chester closed in early May during the bankruptcy of owner Prospect Medical Holdings Inc., a for-profit company based in California, and after the failure of government-supported efforts to form a new nonprofit owner for Crozer-Chester and other Crozer Health facilities.

    Crozer-Chester was particularly important as a safety-net provider for a low-income area of Delaware County that has few other nearby options. The Crozer system, which had four hospitals, was the county’s largest health system and largest employer for many years.

    Two local Democratic officials, State Rep. Leanne Krueger and Delaware County Council member Monica Taylor, said they were encouraged by the approach being taken by Chariot and Allaire.

    At Taylor Hospital, the other Crozer hospital that closed last year, new owners are also looking for healthcare tenants. Local investors bought the Ridley Park facility for $1 million. It is less than four miles from Crozer-Chester.

    The same group agreed last week to pay $1 million for Springfield Hospital, another facility that had previously shut down under Prospect ownership.

  • Lehigh Valley Health Network will go out of network for UnitedHealthcare’s Medicare Advantage plans Monday

    Jefferson Health’s Lehigh Valley Health Network will go out of network Monday for members of UnitedHealthcare’s Medicare Advantage plans.

    That means about more than 20,000 people who get care at LVHN facilities could experience disruptions in their care. Two years of negotiations failed to result in a new contract, Jefferson said in a statement Wednesday.

    Jefferson also said that United reduced payments to LVHN by nearly 40% since 2021, reducing the nonprofit health system’s revenue by more than $100 million over four years.

    “When an insurer stops paying agreed‑upon rates and refuses to negotiate, patient access is put at risk. Jefferson and LVHN will not stand by while an insurer prioritizes its own margins over fair contracts and sustainable care,” said Jeffrey Price, a Jefferson senior vice president involved in managed care and payer relations.

    LVHN patients who have UnitedHealthcare plans through their employers will remain in-network at the nonprofit system through most of April 25, Jefferson said.

    United said that negotiations continue on those contracts, but noted that LVHN wanted a 20% price increase in the first year.

    The dispute does not affect Philadelphia-area Jefferson patients with insurance from UnitedHealthcare, the nation’s largest health insurer.

    Jefferson first warned in October that its LVHN facilities would start going out of network this month.

    At the time, United suggested that Jefferson’s announcement during the Medicare Advantage annual enrollment period was a negotiating tactic designed to put pressure on United.

    United said Wednesday that its “top priority is providing people continued access to the care they need through our broad network of providers who collaborate with us to provide quality, affordable care.”

    The company noted that it recently signed a multiyear contract with LVHN’s biggest competitor, St. Luke’s University Health Network. That contract covers employer-sponsored plans as well as Medicare and Medicaid plans.

    By going out of network with United Medicare Advantage plans, LVHN joins other well-known systems to have done so in the last year. They include Johns Hopkins Medicine and Mayo Clinic.

    Last March, Jefferson went out of network with Cigna Health for a few weeks during a similar impasse in negotiations. Jefferson and Cigna quickly reached a deal after the termination.

  • Springfield Hospital has a new buyer, for $1 million, after an auction winner didn’t close a deal

    Springfield Hospital has a new buyer, for $1 million, after an auction winner didn’t close a deal

    Springfield Hospital has a new buyer, with the same local investor group that bought Taylor Hospital in September agreeing to purchase it for $1 million.

    Bankrupt owner Prospect Medical Holdings said in a court filing Friday that it now plans to sell Springfield Hospital and an associated parking garage to KQT Aikens Partners 2. The group paid $1 million for Taylor.

    Todd Strine, one of the investors involved in KQT Aikens, declined to comment Saturday on the Springfield development. The company has been trying to find healthcare tenants for Taylor, which is in Ridley Park. Among the goals is reestablishing emergency services there, according to local officials.

    At Springfield, KQT Aikens is replacing a partnership of Restorative Health Foundation and Syan Investments LLC, which won an October auction for the hospital property with a $3 million bid but was not making progress toward closing the deal, Prospect’s filing said.

    Prospect sent a letter on Dec. 11 giving the partners a Dec. 15 deadline to complete the purchase. When that did not happen, Prospect terminated the agreement, the filing said. Restorative did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    A challenge for any buyer of Springfield Hospital is a deed restriction that requires 24-7 emergency services at the site. The KQT Aikens deal is contingent on township officials removing that restriction. The KQT Aikens agreement also calls for local taxing authorities to set the assessment of the Springfield Township property at the sale price, as happened at Taylor.

    Jeff Rudolph, president of the Springfield Township Board of Commissioners, said in an email that local officials look forward to restoring the property to a productive use.

    “Prospect will determine the ultimate buyer of the property and, while the township plays no role in that process, we look forward to discussions with the new owner about any proposed future use of the site,” he said.

    Taylor and Springfield Hospitals were part of Crozer Health, which was Delaware County’s largest healthcare provider. That was before Prospect’s bankruptcy a year ago led to the closures last spring of Taylor and Crozer-Chester Medical Center, which was an important safety-net provider for low-income Chester residents.

    Prospect had closed Springfield in early 2022, and Delaware County Memorial Hospital in Drexel Hill in the fall of 2022. In both cases, Prospect blamed the closures on staffing shortages during the COVID-19 pandemic.

  • St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children announced its third leadership change in less than two years

    St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children announced its third leadership change in less than two years

    St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children, a key safety-net provider in North Philadelphia, on Wednesday announced its third leadership change in less than two years.

    Claire Alminde, the hospital’s chief nursing officer and a 37-year veteran of the institution, is St. Chris’ new acting president.

    She is the third interim or acting executive appointed to the top management position at the nonprofit hospital since February 2024 and its fourth leader since 2020. Drexel University and Tower Health have owned St. Chris in a 50-50 joint venture since 2019.

    “Claire is firmly committed to St. Christopher’s mission and exemplifies the compassion, expertise and steadfast commitment that define this hospital and the care we provide to children and families across our region,” St. Chris said in an e-mailed statement.

    St. Chris’ chief nursing officer Claire Alminde has been named acting president of the North Philadelphia safety-net provider.

    There are no immediate plans for a national CEO search. “Right now, Tower’s focus is on helping Claire onboard successfully and lead the organization forward. We are grateful that Claire has committed to serving in this position as long as necessary,” Tower said.

    Alminde is replacing Jodi Coombs, who was appointed interim president and CEO last April. Coombs’ previous position was executive vice president at Children’s Mercy Kansas City, in Missouri. Before that, she worked in Massachusetts.

    Coombs replaced Robert Brooks, who was named president and interim CEO in February 2024 following the announcement that the institution’s last permanent CEO, Don Mueller, was departing for a job in Chattanooga, Tenn., closer to his family.

    Mueller took the job at St. Christopher’s in the summer of 2020, about seven months after Tower and Drexel University bought the facility, but did not permanently move to Philadelphia.

    State health officials in 2023 blamed safety lapses at the hospital on Mueller’s absence and ordered him to be in Philadelphia five days a week.

    Tower oversees day-to-day management of the facility, where about 85% of patients have Medicaid insurance for low-income people. That’s an extremely high rate.

    St. Chris, which has received significant financial support from other local healthcare institutions in recent years, has not published its financial results for the year that ended June 30, 2025. In fiscal 2024, St. Chris had a $31.6 million operating loss.

  • Fewer Americans sign up for Affordable Care Act health insurance as costs spike

    Fewer Americans sign up for Affordable Care Act health insurance as costs spike

    NEW YORK — Fewer Americans are signing up for Affordable Care Act health insurance plans this year, new federal data shows, as expiring subsidies and other factors push health expenses too high for many to manage.

    Nationally, around 800,000 fewer people have selected plans compared to a similar time last year, marking a 3.5% drop in total enrollment so far. That includes a decrease in both new consumers signing up for ACA plans and existing enrollees re-upping them.

    The new data released Monday evening by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is only a snapshot of a continuously changing pool of enrollees. It includes sign-ups through Jan. 3 in states that use Healthcare.gov for ACA plans and through Dec. 27 for states that have their own ACA marketplaces. In most states, the period for shopping for plans continues through Jan. 15 for plans that start in February.

    But even though it’s early, the data builds on fears that expiring enhanced tax credits could cause a dip in enrollment and force many Americans to make tough decisions to delay buying health insurance, look for alternatives or forgo it entirely.

    Experts warn that the number of people who have signed up for plans may still drop even further, as enrollees get their first bill in January and some choose to cancel.

    Healthcare costs at the center of a fight in Congress

    The declining enrollment comes as Congress has been locked in a partisan battle over what to do about the subsidies that expired at the start of the new year. For months, Democrats have fought for a straight extension of the tax credits, while Republicans have insisted larger reforms are a better way to root out fraud and abuse and keep costs down overall. Last week, in a remarkable rebuke of Republican leadership, the House passed legislation to extend the subsidies for three years. The bill now sits in the Senate, where pressure is building for a bipartisan compromise.

    Up until this year, President Barack Obama’s landmark health insurance program had been an increasingly popular option for Americans who don’t get health coverage through their jobs, including small business owners, gig workers, farmers, ranchers and others.

    For the 2021 plan year, about 12 million people selected an Affordable Care Act plan. Enhanced tax credits were introduced the following year and four years later enrollment had doubled to over 24 million.

    This year’s sinking sign-ups — sitting at about 22.8 million so far — mark the first time in the past four years that enrollment has been down from the previous year at this point in the shopping window.

    The loss of enhanced subsidies means annual premium costs will more than double for the average ACA enrollee who had them, according to the healthcare research nonprofit KFF. But extending the subsidies would also be expensive for the country. Ahead of last week’s House vote, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that extending the subsidies for three years would increase the nation’s deficit by about $80.6 billion over the decade.

    Americans begin looking for other options

    Robert Kaestner, a health economist at the University of Chicago, said some of those who abandon ACA plans may have other options, such as going on a partner’s employer health plan or changing their income to qualify for Medicaid. Others will go without insurance at least temporarily while they look for alternatives.

    “My prediction is 2 million more people will lack health insurance for a while,” Kaestner said. ”That’s a serious issue, but Republicans would argue we’re using government money more efficiently, we’re targeting people who really need it and we’re saving $35 billion a year.”

    Several Americans interviewed by The Associated Press have said they’re dropping coverage altogether for 2026 and will pay out of pocket for needed appointments. Many said they are crossing their fingers that they aren’t affected by a costly injury or diagnosis.

    “I’m pretty much going to be going without health insurance unless they do something,” said 52-year-old Felicia Persaud, a Florida entrepreneur who dropped coverage when she saw her monthly ACA costs were set to increase by about $200 per month. “It’s sort of like playing poker and hoping the chips fall and try the best that you can.”