Philadelphia hospital owner announces closure
PHILADELPHIA >> The owner of Hahnemann University Hospital in Philadelphia announced its closure in September because of what the company called “continuing, unsustainable financial losses.”
Philadelphia Academic Health System, a subsidiary of American Academic Health System, said Wednesday that Hahnemann will immediately begin an “orderly wind down of its inpatient and outpatient treatment services” at the 496-bed Level 1 trauma center that has about 2,500 employees.
Joel Freedman, company founder and president said in a statement the healthy system “relentlessly pursued numerous strategic options to keep Hahnemann in operation” and they are “saddened our efforts have not been successful.
The Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals, which represents 800 registered nurses at Hahnemann, called for intervention by state and city officials to save the hospital.
“Hahnemann is a safetynet hospital that for decades has provided care to an under-served community,” union president Maureen May said in a statement. “We cannot allow predatory, for-profit companies to plunder such a valuable public good.”
Philadelphia Academic Health System also owns St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children, but Freedman said that hospital will remain open and the “difficult choice” of closing Hahnemann “will enable us to focus on the future of St. Christopher’s.”
The company said the hospital was also working to find placement for all residents and fellows completing their training at Hahnemann.
The hospital is an academic affiliate of Drexel University College of Medicine, which said it is working to ensure no disruption to the education of its medical students and organized relocation of its hospital-based clinical rotations. In April, 175 people were laid off at Hahnemann, which traces its roots to a homeopathic medical college opened in 1848.