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Crozer Health lost its bid to keep its general surgery residency program

The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education had revoked the Crozer Health accreditation in January, without providing details on the reasons.

Crozer Health lost its bid continue offering a residency program in general surgery. Crozer's main hospital is Crozer-Chester Medical Center in Upland, shown here in March.
Crozer Health lost its bid continue offering a residency program in general surgery. Crozer's main hospital is Crozer-Chester Medical Center in Upland, shown here in March.Read moreMonica Herndon / Staff Photographer

Crozer Health lost its final bid to keep its general surgery residency program, the Delaware County health system said Wednesday.

The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, which oversees the training programs for doctors, withdrew the program’s accreditation “under special circumstances” in January, but did not specify what they were.

The program had 15 slots. In the end, when Crozer lost its appeal, only three residents remained.

“We strongly disagree with the ACGME’s decision. We have worked with the remaining residents to secure training sites for them,” Crozer’s CEO Tony Esposito said in an email.

ACGME’s rules and procedures list two possible reasons for its action at Crozer: “there are a catastrophic loss of resources, including faculty members, facilities, or funding” or “egregious noncompliance with accreditation requirements.”

An anonymous complaint that surgical volumes were insufficient for the residents’ training needs triggered the ACGME’s investigation of the Crozer program, according to legal documents.

Crozer, a for-profit owned by Prospect Medical Holdings Inc, of Los Angeles, still has residency programs in emergency medicine, internal medicine, obstetrics and gynecology, and psychiatry at Crozer-Chester Medical Center. It also has a transitional year program, which is required for some specialties. In addition, it has a family medicine program that is based in Springfield.

“We are actively recruiting clinicians to our facilities to help ensure that our patients continue to receive safe, quality care and we do not anticipate any interruption to our services as a result of the ACGME’s decision,” Esposito said.