Philly med school, outside Philly | Philly Health Insider
And the $50,000 kidney donor debate
Good morning! Today we’re looking at Drexel University’s growing national footprint. Plus, we have an update on Jefferson’s acquisition of the Lehigh Valley Health Network, news of a $39 million federal grant for Rutgers researchers, and an interview with a Philly cancer doctor who cultivates wellness by working with patients on her 40-acre farm in Bucks County.
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— Aubrey Whelan and Abraham Gutman, Inquirer health reporters, @abrahamgutman and @aubreywhelan.
Drexel University is poised to open its seventh regional medical school campus this fall, making it a leader in a national trend toward pushing medical education outside of traditional big-city teaching hospitals. The school even has a four-year, campus in West Reading.
Aubrey (who is writing the newsletter this week) talked to students and school administrators from Drexel’s various campuses about the plusses and minuses of a model now embraced by one in three MD-granting medical schools in America. (Sidebar: Drexel is one of the country’s biggest private med schools, boasting that it teaches one of every 75 medical students in the U.S.).
Drexel was forced to fill gaps when its longtime teaching partner, Hahnemann University Hospital, closed in 2019. By then, Drexel’s West Reading campus was already in the works, and the school was used to sending students as far away as California to train at health systems like Kaiser Permanente in the Bay Area. But losing Hahnemann did underscore for Drexel officials the importance of expanding training opportunities for students.
Simply put, medical schools are training more doctors, which raises the bar on finding clinical rotation slots for everyone. Aubrey explores how Drexel looked to Reading to help students get clinical experiences outside of major cities.
(Pop quiz: There are several other Philly doc-training programs that run regional campuses. Can you name them? Message us if so!)
The latest news to pay attention to
Philly’s children’s and specialty cancer hospitals — CHOP, St. Christopher’s, and Fox Chase Cancer Center — could all get more money from the federal government to treat patients under a City Council proposal. This is especially a boon for St. Chris, where 80% of patients are covered by Medicaid. Harold Brubaker breaks down how the money would flow to and from all Philly acute-care hospitals.
Physicians at ChristianaCare want to form the Philly region’s first union of hospital-employed attending doctors. The doctors say working conditions at Delaware’s largest health system are “unacceptable.” Abraham wrote about how their organizing push follows a growing national trend.
A former Rothman Orthopaedic Institute surgeon and Thomas Jefferson University have agreed to settle the surgeon’s gender-bias lawsuit against the school. The nationally watched federal suit, which The Inquirer’s Wendy Ruderman has covered for months, stemmed from the university’s investigation into sexual assault allegations.
Jefferson finalized its deal to acquire Lehigh Valley Health Network — creating a 30-hospital system that stretches from Scranton to South Jersey. Harold reports the new system will be among the nation’s top 15 revenue-generating health systems.
This week’s number: 89,373.
That’s how many people nationwide are currently waiting for a kidney donation. We learned this stat from our colleague Wendy’s story about a proposal to offer a $50,000 tax credit to incentivize people to donate to strangers. “It’s econ 101,” one told her in a story that also breaks down why some medical ethics experts worry the payment could cross a line into organ trafficking.
The story made us wonder about kidney transplants in the Philadelphia area each year. Here is what we learned:
Hospitals in Philadelphia and its Pennsylvania suburbs performed 518 kidney transplants last year, an analysis of Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network data found. Another 178 kidneys were transplanted this year through the end of April.
Just a third of kidney transplants in 2023 were from living donors. (If you are thinking about donating a kidney — a life-saving gift! — here is what to expect.)
The Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania performed nearly half of all kidney transplantations in the area.
Doylestown Hospital was cited for a number of safety violations between September 2023 and February, Sarah Gantz reports.
In January, the hospital was cited for moving a patient to another facility without confirming they were stable. The hospital updated its policies to require that staff check patients’ vital signs within an hour of transferring them.
In February, the hospital was cited for not documenting that a patient who left the facility against medical advice had been urged to stay. The hospital has agreed to audit patient records and trained nurses on how to document patients who leave against a doctor’s advice.
Philly native Monique Gary, the medical director of the cancer program at Grand View Health/Penn Cancer Network, left city living for a 40-acre farm in Upper Bucks County. There, she runs free retreats to help cancer patients connect with nature — with walks around the property, cooking classes, gardening, and yoga by the fish pond.
She talked to Wendy about her philosophy of “whole person health” to care for cancer patients in mind, body, and spirit. “I tell my patients it’s an opportunity to get rid of all the cancers in your life — if it’s that adult kid who lives in the basement, or that husband who is not faithful, or that job that’s pretty toxic,” she said.
Julia Puchtler, previously chief financial officer at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, was promoted to CFO of the entire University of Pennsylvania health system. (Her predecessor, Keith Kasper, becomes Penn’s chief administrative officer.)
Rutgers received a $39.6 million grant from the NIH this month to help fund the New Jersey Alliance for Clinical and Translational Science, a partnership between academic research institutions, health-care businesses, and patient advocates.
The new funding is aimed at launching new clinical trials and strengthening connections with communities to improve medical research — as well as training a more diverse class of medical providers and researchers.
That’s all for today! Do you get a break this Memorial Day weekend? Or are you on call and bracing for firework injuries at your emergency department? Aubrey, who forgot she was working a Memorial Day shift in 2020 and had to race to the Jersey Shore to interview maskless beachgoers at the height of the COVID pandemic, is very grateful to be off this year.
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Editor’s note: The article has been updated to remove an incorrect reference in the Making Moves section to Puchtler’s responsibilities