Northeastern Hospital Closure Haunts Temple

 
In the midst of a national health care reform battle, a small drama unfolds in northeast Philadelphia. Last week, the Pennsylvania House held up $175 million in additional funding to Temple University. Representative John Taylor described the move as a “wake up call for Temple University” to live up to their responsibility to the public.
 
The communities of Port Richmond, Kensington, Fishtown, Bridesburg and Juniata coalesced last December amid rumors Temple University Health System (TUHS) planned to close down the busy, full-service Northeastern Hospital. Despite the effort of community members and local lawmakers, Temple refused to discuss their plans. In fact, they would not even confirm their intention until they announced in March they would close the hospital. They gave two months notice, which is the minimum required by the state. Temple did the minimum.
 
Back in March a coalition of local legislators – Representatives John Taylor and Mike O'Brien, and Senators Mike Stack and Larry Farnese - found some leverage in the House's authority to grant supplemental funding to Temple University; they said they would hold the funding up come budget time. Temple believed they were bluffing. They apparently figured that since the hospital would cease admissions in mid-May, and be completely empty by end of June, that lawmakers would not have a motivation at budget time to follow through. They were wrong.
 
Temple reacted to last week's news by threatening to pass the costs onto their students via a 45% tuition hike, despite a balance sheet showing robust cash reserves (http://www.temple.edu/budget/documents/boardandauxiliarybudgets.pdf). The move is intended to inflame the public and pressure politicians to back down.
 
Taylor said Temple had the option to work with the community, its employees, and the state to keep the hospital open but instead they chose to shut down Northeastern. “Everything was done in secret, they gave very little information to the community at large or elected officials. That shouldn't be tolerated. They are a public institution with a commitment to that community,” said Taylor. “It was a lot  easier to just close the facility leaving a gaping hole, both from the point of view of health care and employment. It was also the center of that community in many other ways as well. Their deficit there was a minor fraction of some of their problems and could have definitely been worked out.”
 
Representative Taylor charged that the University hired TUHS Vice President Ed Notebaert specifically to close Northeastern and that the executive was not interested in alternatives. With 55,000 ER visits last year and nearly 1800 births, Northeastern was a busy hospital with a healthy daily census. At the time, Temple spoke about Northeastern's large proportion of un- and underinsured patients as their main reason for closing the hospital. The health care needs of the community were not a part of the equation.
 
Temple University Health System bought up four community hospitals in northeast Philadelphia in the mid-1990s and has since closed them or cut essential services like maternity, systematically depriving those neighborhoods of health care access. Northeastern was the last facility with a maternity department between Center City and Bucks County. That it was absorbing births that previously would have gone to other hospitals (their volume more than doubled in the last five years) is a major reason its maternity department became such a liability. Maternity is not reimbursed at a sustainable rate, particularly by Medicare.
 
The Philadelphia lawmakers made it clear to Temple University that if they were going to neglect their responsibility to the northeast communities, they would see their funding withheld at budget time.  “Now their day of reckoning has arrived,” said Taylor.
 
Representatives Taylor and O'Brien have been meeting with Temple this week to work through the impasse. According to a WHYY interview with Taylor, they are working to return the Northeastern building to service in the community, to “repair some of the damage done”. Taylor said he believed they were making good progress.
 

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