Health care workers lambaste private equity company’s closure of two Delco hospitals

For 37 years, Peggy Malone has dedicated her days to caring for patients experiencing mental health emergencies at Crozer-Chester Medical Center in Upland, a suburb of Philadelphia. This week, however, the psychiatric nurse is out of a job, and her patients will no longer have a hospital many have relied on for lifesaving medication and support.

On April 22, a federal judge approved a plan by the private equity firm Prospect Medical Holdings to close the hospital. The for-profit company, which is based in California and owns the hospital’s parent company, Crozer Health, filed for bankruptcy in a Texas federal court in January. Prospect on April 21 filed a motion to close Crozer Health.

Crozer Health operates Crozer-Chester Medical Center, the last remaining trauma center in Delaware County, and Taylor Hospital in Ridley Park, both of which are expected to close by May 2. It also operates four outpatient facilities in suburban Philadelphia, which are slated to remain open until they are sold.

“Without those resources and without being able to adjust their medications, there’s going to be suicides, there’s going to be violence, there’s going to be mass destruction here,” Malone told the Pennsylvania Independent on April 22, when dozens of health care workers, community members, and lawmakers gathered outside the Crozer-Chester Medical Center to protest the closure. Malone is also the president of the Crozer-Chester Nurses Association, a chapter of the Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals, a union that organized the protest.

In the final days of operation of the two hospitals, staff and lawmakers are painting a dire picture of the health care landscape in Delaware County. With the closure of Crozer-Chester and Taylor, there will be two hospitals left in a county that’s home to a little more than half a million people.

That, staff and elected officials said, means patients will have to travel longer for health care and will likely lead to more people dying because they won’t be able to access lifesaving care in time.

“I don’t believe that these monsters can be this evil, that they come in and they shut these doors and they take away the only resource, sometimes the only family, that these patients have,” Malone told the crowd.

‘Greed and mismanagement’

Many of those who spoke at the event said they were holding out hope that a last-minute buyer could come in and save the hospitals. That, however, will not happen.

While Gov. Josh Shapiro’s administration, the Community Foundation for Delaware County, and Delaware County collectively poured more than $36 million into keeping Crozer Health operational while Prospect Medical Holdings searched for a buyer after filing for bankruptcy in January, the company has given up on finding a buyer. It also reportedly rejected a $5 million offer from Penn Medicine to continue its search for a buyer instead of closing outright, according to the Daily Pennsylvanian.

Prospect Medical Holdings did not respond to a request for comment.

Crozer Health, which has roots in the community dating to the 1800s, began laying off its 2,651 employees on April 25, according to a notice it filed with the state. As of April 28, it had stopped admitting any new patients or ambulances, according to Crozer’s website. 

Prospect Medical Holdings had previously shuttered two other hospitals in the state, Delaware County Memorial Hospital and Springfield Hospital, in 2022. Democratic elected officials, including Gov. Shapiro, along with health care workers and community members lambasted the company’s closures of Crozer-Chester and Taylor, saying they are emblematic of private equity gutting the country’s health care system.

“Prospect Medical Holdings, the for-profit owner of Crozer Health, pillaged these hospitals for their own gain — and today, we see the result of their greed and mismanagement with the announced closure and loss of critical health care services for the people of Delaware County,” Shapiro said in a statement provided to the Pennsylvania Independent.

“My administration has worked tirelessly for more than two years alongside the Office of Attorney General, state legislators, and local government – committing millions of dollars to support Crozer and its workers while ensuring not one penny of taxpayer money be used to enrich Prospect,” Shapiro continued. “Now, we will keep working closely with our local partners to support the workers who have served so many families and patients and continue fighting for the patients who have been harmed by Prospect’s greed.”

After Prospect purchased Crozer Health nine years ago, health care workers said, they immediately began seeing problems with their new management and a general deterioration of services at their hospitals, reflecting the experiences of staff at other hospitals owned by Prospect in other states, according to a ProPublica investigation. Instead of revitalizing Crozer Health, Prospect Medical cut services and closed facilities while diverting funds to private shareholders and investors, according to a lawsuit that former state Attorney General Michelle Henry filed in October 2024.

“We are taking legal action against a company which agreed to prioritize affordable, accessible healthcare — but instead broke their promise with years of neglectful, self-serving practices that have put lives at risk,” Henry said in a press release announcing the lawsuit. “My office is the last line of defense for Pennsylvanians who are losing quality, convenient healthcare due to corporate greed. We had no choice but to file suit as Prospect Medical’s conduct will almost certainly result in future closures that will force patients to travel distances for emergency care.”

‘Where do they go? They die.’

For years, Crozer Health employees have warned that Prospect Medical Holdings was gutting their hospitals, Malone said. 

“This has been our cry all along when this for-profit company, Prospect Medical, came in here nine years ago,” she said. “They accomplished exactly what they came to do.They came to take every penny from our system, from us, from this community.”

“I have said it a thousand times: Please, somebody hear us,” Malone continued. “Our patients have nowhere to go. They can transfer them all today; they’re very proud of the fact that they’re finding beds for everyone and sending everyone home. Where do they go tomorrow? When the crisis center is gone and the emergency room is gone? University of Penn is not close. Riddle is not close. ChristianaCare is not close. For any of us, and for any of these patients, where do they go? They die. Who’s going to tell the mom whose child dies of an asthma attack that her child died because she couldn’t get care close enough to be able to save her child?”

“Our patients are going to die, and that’s a fact,” said Melanie McKendry, a patient advocate and lead medical assistant at Crozer-Chester Medical Center. “Them closing us is going to disrupt chemotherapy. We have patients who are actively getting treatment that are being abruptly told that they have to find care elsewhere in 10 days.”

Dr. Max Cooper, an emergency department physician at Crozer-Chester, spoke of a patient who arrived at the hospital that morning with a heart attack. If that individual hadn’t had access to the Upland hospital, he would have died, Cooper said.

“As he arrived, his heart stopped, but because he was in our cath lab, and because he had a cardiologist next to him, they opened his blood vessel and they restarted his heart, and he’s alive right now in our ICU because this hospital is here and this hospital is open,” Cooper said. “If he had to drive 15 minutes down the road to Riddle, or 30 minutes down the road to Penn, or across state lines to Christiana, he would have died in the ambulance, and they would not have been able to resuscitate him when he got to the ER. In our fight to save lives, seconds matter.”