Hospital's 2d sale means its end

Abington Memorial Hospital bought nearby Warminster Hospital yesterday from Solis Healthcare L.L.C. and announced plans to convert the Bucks County full-service hospital into an ambulatory-care facility in 30 days.

Financial terms of the purchase - it is the second time in three months that the hospital was sold - were not disclosed.

Warminster's inpatient services and emergency department will be closed in 30 days and consolidated at Abington Memorial six miles away.

Warminster's 350 part- and full-time employees will be paid for 60 days, but only a little more than half of the 350 will be offered jobs at Abington Memorial or the new outpatient services center on the Warminster campus.

The rest will be laid off, but will be on a furlough list to be recalled if positions open up, said Meg McGoldrick, Abington's chief operating officer.

Although Warminster is a 153-bed hospital, just under 60 of those beds are consistently occupied. Warminster is surrounded by four large community hospitals: Holy Redeemer, St. Mary, Doylestown and Abington Memorial.

"We have looked at the numbers, at the market share, and understand what patients currently do in the Warminster area," McGoldrick said. "You cannot operate a sophisticated facility in a 60-bed hospital. The health-care economics don't work."

Abington Memorial will continue and expand outpatient services now offered at Warminster, including outpatient surgery, radiology, laboratory services, cardiology, sleep center, wound center, dialysis treatment, and new services, including an ob-gyn clinic.

Katie Farrell, who had been CEO of Warminster, was named executive director of Abington's Warminster campus.

Warminster's emergency department will be converted to a walk-in community health center, called an "urgent care center," for patients with minor injuries and illnesses that are not serious enough to warrant a visit to an emergency department, McGoldrick said.

On July 1, Solis acquired Warminster and Roxborough Memorial Hospital in Philadelphia from Tenet Healthcare Corp. for $25.5 million.

"I know it sounds like a flip, but it's not a flip," said Robert G. Souaid, chief executive officer of Solis, a for-profit corporation formed last spring to buy the two hospitals.

In late July, Abington Memorial, which had long expressed interest in Warminster, approached Solis.

"We did not shop the deal, or put it on the market, or realize we had a bad business plan that couldn't work," said Souaid, who runs Solis Healthcare with Jack Donnelly, longtime CEO of Roxborough Memorial. "Quite the contrary. We were moving forward. We were executing our business plan."

"Abington approached us with a very strong offer, both in price and terms," Souaid said. "It just made prudent business for us to accept it, so we could concentrate on Roxborough."

Abington Memorial tried to buy Warminster from Tenet, but Tenet wanted to sell Roxborough and Warminster together. "That was not of interest to us. We were very interested in Warminster. Roxborough is not our community," McGoldrick said.