Suburban Community Hospital will cease acute services June 30. Inspections records show it has struggled with staffing levels.
The Prime Healthcare hospital was cited multiple times for insufficient staffing last year.
Suburban Community Hospital struggled to keep enough staff on duty last year, at times resulting in dangerous delays in care.
The hospital is now in its final days before being converted to a 15-bed behavioral health center that will operate under the license of its sister hospital, Roxborough Memorial Hospital, beginning July 1.
Owner Prime Healthcare Foundation has been winding down Suburban’s services since last summer, when it transitioned to a “micro hospital” with an emergency department but no operating rooms or intensive care unit.
The safety issues identified by inspectors last year had no bearing on the decision to transition Suburban to a behavioral health outpost of Roxborough Hospital, according to Prime.
Rather, the shift is the health system’s way of “responding to the unmet needs in our community and addressing gaps in access and resources,” Michelle Aliprantis, a spokesperson for Suburban, said in a statement.
“We firmly believe that this strategic shift will enhance our ability to provide high-quality care in a safe and supportive environment, tailored to the unique needs of our patients,” she said.
» READ MORE: Suburban Community Hospital in East Norriton will become small behavioral health facility
The move comes after years of dwindling business and staffing challenges at the East Norriton hospital. Suburban had an average of 23 patients a day in 2023, despite being licensed for 126 beds.
Pennsylvania Department of Health inspection reports show how patient care was affected. Last year, Suburban was cited three times for insufficient staffing:
In April 2024, inspectors found a patient had waited more than seven hours for an urgent CT scan because no staff with the specialty expertise to perform the imaging scans was on duty at the time. An investigation by the health department found that the hospital had failed to report insufficient staffing for CT services on 17 dates between November 2023 and March 2024. Hospitals are required to notify the state when they don’t have enough staff to operate a critical service, so that patients arriving by ambulance can be sent to other hospitals.
In May 2024, inspectors cited the hospital for not having enough on-call staff to cover its operating rooms outside normal operating hours on 67 days between January and mid-May.
In August 2024, the hospital was again cited for insufficient CT staff on 18 dates between January and the beginning of August.
Beginning in July, the facility will be rebranded as a Suburban Behavioral Health Campus of Roxborough Memorial Hospital for patients aged 55 and older.
About 37 full-time staff will remain at the new behavioral health campus. Another 89 full-time employees have been offered positions at Prime’s other facilities, including Roxborough and Lower Bucks Hospital.
After the changes, Jefferson Einstein Montgomery Hospital will have the nearest ED services, two miles from Suburban.