Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
Chamber launches effort to save Jennersville Hospital
PENN TOWNSHIP » Concerned that the closing of Jennersville Hospital will not only damage the economy in southern Chester County, but put a hardship on thousands who need quality medical care close to home, an effort is being launched to appeal to its owners to keep it open.
“We have to stamp our feet and bang our fists on the counter and say you need to know you are hurting us,” said Cheryl Kuhn, president of the Southern Chester County Chamber of Commerce. “This is critically important. It will impact our local economy and severely impact businesses that want to move into this area. They will reconsider if there is no community hospital here.”
Kuhn has been working with Gary Smith, president and CEO of the Chester County Economic Development Council, to determine whether a group of investors can be found to save the hospital from closing. Readingbased Tower Health owns the hospital and announced earlier this year it would close the facility Dec. 31, impacting 293 employees there.
Kuhn said leaving so many people without fast access to health care is a matter of life and death. Those who live in southern Chester County will have to drive to Christiana Hospital in Delaware, Chester County Hospital or Brandywine Hospital — all more than a 40-minute drive — for hospital care beginning in January. And the future of Brandywine Hospital, also owned and managed by Tower Health, is uncertain as Tower Health officials have said they are looking at alternatives to closing the hospital.
Tower Health has said the closing of the 52-bed Jennersville Hospital is due to it underperforming financially. Tower wrote off $292.9 million for the
value of its suburban Philadelphia hospitals — including Jennersville Hospital — it acquired from Community Health Systems in 2017 for $423 million.
Dave Plumber said the closing of Jennersville Hospital will really impact his wife, who needs medical procedures and must be there often.
“It’s disconcerting,” said Plummer, 64 of West Grove. “We don’t know what we will do. It’s scary when the hospital is just 5 minutes away, and now it’s going to take us more than a half hour. You would think Penn Medicine would step up and take over the hospital. Jennersville is a nice facility.”
Vanessa Ross, who lives in East Nottingham Township, just a 9-minute drive to Jennersville Hospital, is a mother of 9-year-old twins and battling breast cancer. She is often in treatment — sometimes three times per week — for an MRI, a CT scan or an echocardiogram. She has two jobs and said the drive to Phoenixville Hospital — nearly two hours roundtrip — will impact her family.
“I’m restricted to Tower Health for all my radiology,” she said. “If Tower closes Jennersville, I am forced to drive to Phoenixville or Brandywine. If they pull this out of this community, it will be so detrimental. The people at Jennersville are so friendly, and I know I won’t get that at other hospitals, when I will need to wait 3 hours in the ER.”
Ross said she recently had to take one of her sons to the ER at Jennersville and got spoiled on the quality and quickness of service.
“My son had to have three staples in his head and it took 45 minutes,” she said. “We were in and out shorter than it would have taken me to drive to another hospital.”
Kuhn said she knows time is running short, and she is looking at getting together a group of people, including local lawmakers, to take a drive to Reading to talk to executives about changing their decision.
“I’d like them to see the faces of people in the community they are turning their backs on,” she said. “They need to see our faces. They need to see the faces of people this is affecting.”
For those interested, Kuhn can be reached at ckuhn@scccc.com.
As it stands, Jennersville will cease providing inpatient services as of noon Dec. 31.
Jennersville will accept emergency admissions through 11:50 p.m. Dec. 31. At that time EMS personnel will be directed to transport patients to other area emergency rooms. The emergency room will remain open to walk-in patients through the closing date.
Jennersville will continue to wind down its operations after the closure. Patients will be able to obtain their medical records through Tower Health.
Jan. 1, 2022, Jennersville will no longer accept direct or elective admission.