New Jersey’s Deborah Heart & Lung Center has a new emergency department operator
Deborah Heart & Lung wanted to block Virtua from taking control of the satellite emergency department it opened a decade ago.
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Capital Health will start operating the satellite emergency department at Deborah Heart & Lung Center in Browns Mills, N.J., on July 1, taking over from Lourdes Medical Center of Burlington County.
Deborah, founded in 1922 as a tuberculosis sanatorium deep in New Jersey’s Pinelands, sought a new operator for its emergency department after Virtua, South Jersey’s largest health system, agreed to acquire Lourdes Health Network, which also includes Our Lady of Lourdes Medical Center in Camden.
For more than a decade, Deborah has been battling Virtua in court over patient referral practices allegedly designed to put Deborah out of a business or force it into a takeover, so the Burlington County nonprofit badly wanted to keep Virtua from gaining a foothold in Browns Mills.
Capital operates two hospitals, Capital Regional Medical Center in Trenton and Capital Health Medical Center — Hopewell.