Northeastern Hospital will be closed

Citing financial problems, Temple University Health System said yesterday it was closing Northeastern Hospital in the city's Port Richmond section and, with it, yet another of Philadelphia's maternity wards.

After Northeastern closes at the end of June, only six city hospitals will deliver babies. About 1,800 women a year gave birth at Northeastern.

The hospital will "transition" to a multi-specialty ambulatory-care center by July 1, Temple said.

The announcement caused dismay among employees and community leaders, who worry about whether other hospitals can handle the influx of pregnant women and about the closure's economic impact.

"The economic engine of that neighborhood is that hospital," said state Rep. John Taylor (R., Phila.), who represents the neighborhood. He wants to stop the closure and said he had talked yesterday with fellow lawmakers and state officials about how to do that.

He was angry that Temple, which is heavily dependent on state funding and receives extra state money because so many of its patients are poor, has not said what the state could do to help keep the hospital open.

John Buckley, Northeastern's chief executive, said that Northeastern will continue to provide outpatient services that are badly needed in the community. Temple University Hospital, which is three miles away, is capable of handling all of Northeastern's births, he said, although it expects that only 64 percent of Northeastern patients will choose to go there. Temple now delivers 2,400 babies a year and plans to spend $1.6 million to expand maternity capacity.

The new center will offer prenatal care and family health, non-emergency walk-in health care, and cancer, cardiac, digestive-disease, orthopedic and occupational health care. Radiology services and routine lab work will also be available.

Temple said jobs will be eliminated, but did not specify how many.

Northeastern has 849 full- and part-time employees, Buckley said. There will be 50 positions in the new outpatient facility. Buckley said Northeastern employees would be able to apply for jobs in the rest of the Temple system. In anticipation of yesterday's announcement, the system had left some positions unfilled, he said.

Doctors who work at Northeastern will get privileges at Temple, although some who work in the emergency department will lose their jobs.

Bill Cruice, executive director of PASNAP, the union representing 200 registered nurses at Northeastern, said he was told that 70 of the nurses would be offered jobs elsewhere in the system.

The decision to close Northeastern as a hospital was made "in the face of declining utilization and mounting losses on health-care operations," the system said.

The hospital, which has 187 beds, has served the community for nearly 100 years and became part of the Temple system in 1995. The system also includes Temple University Hospital, Jeanes Hospital and Temple's Episcopal Campus.

In fiscal year 2008, Northeastern Hospital had a $6.6 million loss and is projected to lose an additional $15 million in fiscal year 2009 ending June 30, Temple said.

Buckley said more than half of the hospital's patients were insured by Medicaid, the government program for the poor. Its payments to hospitals are not enough to cover costs, he said. Asked why the system would then want more such patients at its flagship hospital, Buckley said that, as an advanced academic medical center, Temple University Hospital negotiates higher payment rates from insurers.

In February, Edmond Notebaert, the new leader of Temple University Health System, warned of $40 million to $50 million in spending cuts this year, but did not specify how those savings would be achieved.

Notebaert, president and chief executive officer of the health system and head of Temple's medical school, has said the system needed to make the cuts because it had lost money on operations for five of the last six years.

Albert Pizzica, chief of pediatrics at Northeastern, said that closing the hospital's emergency department was potentially "disastrous" because women sometimes walk in close to giving birth.

"People will die," he said. "Babies will die and pregnant women will die when they can't reach the delivering hospitals in time."

While Temple University Hospital is only three miles away, he said "it's another world" and many in the neighborhood don't drive.

Maryann Trombetta, vice president of Port Richmond Town Watch, said people in the neighborhood are particularly upset because they worked with Temple in 2003 to oppose a Wal-Mart that wanted to move in. At the time, she said, Temple said it planned to expand on the site Wal-Mart wanted.