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Sale of Chestnut Hill Hospital to Temple Health and partners gets final approval

Temple officials have said the acquisition will expand its footprint Northwest Philadelphia and eastern Montgomery County. Fox Chase Cancer Center will start offering services in Chestnut Hill.

An Orphans’ Court judge in Philadelphia approved the sale of Chestnut Hill Hospital to a consortium led by Temple University Health System for $28 million, Tower Health said Friday.
An Orphans’ Court judge in Philadelphia approved the sale of Chestnut Hill Hospital to a consortium led by Temple University Health System for $28 million, Tower Health said Friday.Read moreTower Health

An Orphans Court judge in Philadelphia on Thursday approved the sale of Chestnut Hill Hospital to a consortium led by Temple University Health System for $28 million, Tower Health said Friday.

Temple and its partners, Redeemer Health and Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine, are expected to take over on Jan. 1. Temple will own 60% of the hospital, with the rest split between its partners. Under a transition services agreement, the new owners could pay Tower an additional $4 million.

The Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General and Tower bondholders had previously approved the sale, which was announced in August.

A previous attempt to sell the hospital to Trinity Health Mid-Atlantic ended last January when Trinity decided “it could not identify enough synergies” to make the deal work, according to Tower’s petition to Orphans Court, a division of the Court of Common Pleas that oversees the sale of nonprofits.

Tower said in a statement that it was “pleased and grateful” that Judge Matthew D. Carrafiello issued the decree approving the sale. He approved the sale without a public hearing.

Chestnut Hill, which is licensed for 148 beds, is the second of the five hospitals Tower bought to be sold. Tower sold Jennersville Hospital in Penn Township near West Grove to ChristianaCare in July for $8 million. Tower had closed Jennersville at the end of last year. Brandywine Hospital, near Coatesville, closed on Jan. 31 and is still for sale.

Temple, which also expanded recently through the acquisition in 2021 of the former Cancer Treatment Centers of America location in the Juniata Park section of Philadelphia, will be the operating partner in the consortium. Temple is turning the former cancer hospital into a women’s hospital, which is expected to open for outpatient care in April, with the full opening planned for July.

“We believe there is significant opportunity to improve the quality of care” at Chestnut Hill, Temple’s CEO Mike Young told bond analysts on Nov. 17. That will lead to better community perception of “a hospital that’s been underperforming for decades.”