Super Size Me (Jefferson’s Version) | Philly Health Insider

Good morning. Today, we have news on the acquisition that will make Jefferson one of the biggest nonprofit hospital systems in the country.

Plus, we cover a drop in drug overdose deaths in Camden, shakeups at Penn’s Gene Therapy Program, and a new regional med school for Temple.

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— Aubrey Whelan, Abraham Gutman, and Alison McCook, Inquirer health reporters, @aubreywhelan, @abrahamgutman, and @alisonmccook.

Thomas Jefferson University is officially one of the largest nonprofit health systems in the U.S. after it completed the acquisition of Lehigh Valley Health Network last week.

Jefferson had just three hospitals in 2015. Less than a decade later, the system has 32 hospitals in Philadelphia, the city’s suburbs, South Jersey, Allentown, and as far north as Scranton.

Let’s take a by-the-numbers look at the combined health system:

The deal was first reported in December, and sped through the regulatory process more quickly than many hospital deals this size.

The expansion “will allow us to continue to have a big community presence from the rural areas to the urban areas and all points in between,” Jefferson CEO Joseph G. Cacchione said.

But, he acknowledged, “big is not necessarily better all the time. Some of the systems that are failing out there are very large,” the CEO said.

Read more about the deal in Harold Brubaker’s story.

This week’s number: 39%.

That’s the percentage by which overdose deaths in Camden County decreased in the first six months of 2024, a significant drop that county officials are hoping will hold.

Though officials say it’s too early to know exactly what’s behind the decrease in overdoses, our neighbors across the river have spent several years setting up a slew of initiatives aimed at saving lives. Expanded outreach programs and harm reduction measures, an effort to lower barriers to addiction treatment, and better collaboration between county agencies have all likely contributed to the drop in deaths.

Read Aubrey’s story to learn more about what’s working in Camden.

Suburban Community Hospital in East Norriton was cited twice by state health inspectors between December 2023 and May 2024 for insufficient staffing that contributed to an unsafe environment for patients and delayed needed imaging services.

Inspectors found that a patient had waited more than seven hours for an urgent CAT scan in November. And, investigators found, the hospital didn’t have enough on-call staff to cover operating rooms outside of its normal operating hours on 67 days between January and mid-May.

Advocating for yourself or a loved one in a health-care setting can be difficult. In a column for The Inquirer’s health section, Penn internist Jeffrey Millstein asks a particularly determined patient of his for advice on how to get through to doctors.

Her approach is to be “respectfully relentless” — in other words, “doggedly persistent, while at the same time showing sincere respect for the professional training, stressors, and barriers that health-care providers face,” Millstein writes.

Read Millstein’s column for tips on how to adopt the practice.

Penn’s Gene Therapy Program is splitting into two for-profit companies. The prominent research scientist Jim Wilson, who led the program, will helm GEMMA Biotherapeutics, which will focus on lower-cost gene therapy platforms that treat rare diseases. He will also serve as board chair at a second company, Franklin Biolabs, which will offer diagnostic testing to other gene therapy companies.

Both will be headquartered in the Philadelphia area, and Wilson will leave Penn as part of the move. Penn will license its intellectual property in gene therapy to the new companies.

The aim is to garner more money for gene therapy projects as investment in biotech has declined. The Gene Therapy Program laid off about a quarter of its workforce last year. Another 25 people will lose their jobs in this move, Penn said, but about 225 employees have been offered similar roles at the new companies.

Last week, Philadelphia hosted the international meeting of the Alzheimer’s Association, the world’s largest gathering of researchers and clinicians focused on Alzheimer’s and dementia.

One Temple project presented at the conference caught Alison’s eye: A study that assessed cognitive decline by asking patients to make breakfast or lunch.

Traditional cognitive tests — for instance, listening to a list of random words and repeating them back — are less than ideal. They often don’t capture real-life skills, and, as is often the case with standardized tests, white people tend to perform better than Black people. These differences are not based in biology, and have instead been attributed to social disparities, such as in education.

So researchers are exploring better ways to measure brain health. In a version of a testing approach pioneered at Moss Rehab, researchers at Temple University asked 100 older adults living in the Philly area to try traditional cognitive testing, then do something very different: Make breakfast and lunch using everyday objects.

Black participants scored worse than white participants in traditional cognitive tests, but performed equally well in many of the measures related to making a meal.

Study author Tania Giovannetti said she and her team are trying to develop a digital version of the meal-making task for the clinic, where patients move simulated food items around on a touchscreen. “We call that our virtual kitchen,” she said.

Read Alison’s story for other notable findings presented at the Alzheimer’s meeting by researchers based in our area.

That’s all for this week. Thanks for reading!

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