Nemours Children’s Health takes over some pediatric services at Crozer Health in Delaware County
Nemours hired two Crozer pediatricians and will staff the NICU at Crozer-Chester Medical Center.
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Nemours Children’s Health has started providing pediatric care at Crozer Health in Delaware County under an affiliation announced Wednesday.
Nemours, a nonprofit with hospitals in Wilmington and Orlando, now employs two former Crozer primary care pediatricians. It began staffing the neonatal intensive care unit at Crozer-Chester Medical Center in January, and will provide pediatric cardiology services at Crozer.
The affiliation could boost Nemours’ presence in Southeastern Pennsylvania. Its market share suffered in 2022 when Main Line Health ended a 25-year affiliation with Nemours in favor of Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, which opened a small hospital in King of Prussia, also in 2022.
Nemours clinicians already serve as the neonatology team at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia and at Trinity Health’s St. Francis Hospital in Wilmington. Nemours also staffs the NICU at Inspira Health in South Jersey.
Crozer-Chester, in Upland, is the only NICU in Delaware County for seriously ill newborns. Its neonatal intensive care unit has 18 bassinets, of which eight were staffed in 2022, according to the latest state data. It had 158 admissions that year.
Changes at Crozer
The arrangement with Nemours is the third time in the last six months that Crozer has reached a deal to have core services provided by another local health system. Since Oct. 1, Temple has been sending a cardiothoracic surgeon to Crozer-Chester, which has Delaware County’s only trauma center. Jefferson Health started providing stroke coverage last month.
Meanwhile Crozer’s owner, Prospect Medical Holdings Inc., a for-profit company based in Los Angeles, is trying to sell the health system to a nonprofit under a Feb. 2 court-approved agreement with the Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General.
Prospect’s investment bank issued documents this month designed to get the sale process underway, but local industry experts doubt a buyer will emerge because Crozer has a large unfunded pension liability and needs huge investments to modernize many of its facilities.