Let’s talk money | Philly Health Insider

We’re rounding up this week which nonprofit health systems are making money and which aren’t in the Philly region. Based on their recently released earning statements, we break down which systems are in the black and those in the red — and by how much.

Philadelphia also got a recent shout-out from the CDC — and not in a good way — over the potential public health harm from the mayor’s decision to cut funding to syringe services. And amid a youth mental health crisis, we look at the data on whether the region has enough psychiatrists to meet the needs of children and teens.

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— Abraham Gutman, Inquirer health reporter, @abrahamgutman.

Money makes the health system world go round. So we’re stepping back to assess what the latest round of earning statements tells us about how health systems in the region are recovering financially from the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The good news: Those losing money are losing less. The less good news: Most are still losing money.

Only three Philadelphia-area nonprofit health systems were profitable in the nine months that ended March 31: Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Health System, and ChristianaCare.

The other seven major nonprofit systems reported strong revenue growth, but it wasn’t enough to put them in the black.

Tower Health, for example, reduced its operating loss from $122.8 million last year to $27.4 million. That wasn’t enough to fill up its cash reserves, which had dwindled to only 30 days of operating expenses. Tower’s financial recovery got a boost after the release of its earning statement, when bondholders agreed to a major refinancing of the Berks County nonprofit’s debt.

The biggest player (by hospital beds) on Philadelphia’s block, Thomas Jefferson University, reported an operating loss of $30.5 million. That’s still losing money, but a significant improvement from last year’s $117.5 million loss. (Jefferson’s operating margin was -0.41%, an improvement from -1.66%.) And Jefferson expects to keep growing through planned acquisition of Lehigh Valley Health Network, which reported $11.1 million in operating loss.

Our colleague Harold Brubaker compiled a one-stop read highlighting what matters in the latest financial disclosures.

This week’s number: 4,408.

That’s the number of Philadelphia-area kids under 18 for every one child and adolescent psychiatrist. That’s not enough psychiatrists, according to the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

The academy follows a threshold of at least 47 psychiatrists who specialize in treating young people for 100,000 kids and teens in a county. But no county in the Philly region meets that benchmark. Montgomery County is closest with 41 per 100,000. In New Jersey, Gloucester County has only three.

It’s worth noting that psychiatrists aren’t the only mental health providers who assist kids and youth. So this is only a partial view of the universe of services.

The data comes from a new AACAP mapping tool, showing the ratio of child and adolescent psychiatrist to population under 18 in 2022.

The tool also shows that Philadelphia had the youngest practitioners in the region, with an average age of 47. Bucks had the oldest, averaging at 61 years old.

(Fun fact: the AACAP’s president is the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia’s Tami Benton. We always like an extra local connection.)

State inspectors visited Chester County Hospital twice between October 2023 and March. In October, inspectors determined a complaint was unfounded. A few days later, inspectors followed up on a 2023 citation that found the hospital provided an emergency abortion without authorization and found the hospital in compliance after addressing the issue.

Could best-selling video games Minecraft and Grand Theft Auto be the life coach that some teens need?

Drew Lightfoot, a licensed therapist at Thriveworks, believes video games could help teens identify and resolve challenges in their lives by developing problem-solving skills.

Wendy Ruderman spoke to Lightfoot about the potential benefits of gaming — and the warning signs that a teen’s gaming habit is becoming a problem.

ChristianaCare Medical Group president, Lisa Maxwell, and its chief medical officer, Roger Krezner, “left the organization” on Monday, according to a staff email from CEO Janice Nevin. In the internal note obtained by The Inquirer, Nevin said the changes to the health system’s leadership team were not related to the recent unionization push by Christiana attending physicians.

Meanwhile, Doylestown Health has a new chief medical officer for the first time in two decades. Cardiologist Sean Reinhardt is now the top doc at the Bucks County health system. He succeeds Scott Levy, who retired after 20 years in the role.

Patients with advanced cancers could benefit from palliative care, but many lack access to specialists. Can oncologists fill the gap?

Fox Chase Cancer Center has been experimenting with how to offer such care to more patients by providing palliative care training to hematology-oncology fellows.

The hem-onc fellows (as we learned we are supposed to say) identified patients who needed palliative care, and referred them to a specialty clinic. In a novel study, the fellows then joined the patients during their visits to the palliative care clinic, seeing them alongside the attending palliative care physicians.

This week, Fox Chase researchers presented data on how the pilot program worked at the 2024 American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting:

Sixteen of 17 participating fellows who responded to a survey found value in joining the palliative care visits, and all agreed that the experience helped them feel more engaged with their sickest patients.

“We believe this pilot could serve as a model for integrating palliative care education into hematology/oncology fellowships nationally,” said Jessica Bauman, a Fox Chase oncologist who led the study.

Thank you for hanging with us for another week! We know health-care workers are busy around the clock, but we hope you get some time to enjoy the beautiful weather. I’m excited to continue my journey as an Israeli immigrant dad in America, learning how to throw a baseball at the same pace as my 2-year-old son.

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