Doylestown Health announces partnership to join Penn Medicine. What’s next?

Doylestown Health will be "integrated" into the University of Pennsylvania Health System joining its Penn Medicine network, according to a Thursday afternoon news release from the Bucks County health system.

The announcement is the initial step in bringing Penn Medicine and Doylestown Health togethe in what will be a several month process "for the development of new clinical programs and enhanced services to help more patients and families across the greater Philadelphia region."

“Penn Medicine aims to provide options for patients everywhere in our region, no matter where they live," said Kevin B. Mahoney, UPHS CEO. "We are excited to explore this opportunity with Doylestown Health, which has a strong, historic commitment to patients in the Northern region of the areas we serve.”

The local nonprofit health system and Penn Medicine have an existing partnership, including the Penn Radiation Oncology center that opened in 2011 at the Doylestown Hospital, which itself has been for over a decade part of the Penn Cancer Network.

“Doylestown Health is deeply committed to maintaining our mission to provide patients the highest quality of care, close to home,” said Doylestown Health President and CEO James Brexler. “As we begin our second century, our boards of trustees are excited about how this partnership with Penn Medicine will further expand Doylestown Health’s ability to deliver clinical excellence and positively impact the health and well-being of the communities we have faithfully served for more than 100 years.”

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The release adds that any final plans or agreements between Doylestown Health and Penn Medicine would need approval from federal and state regulators.

Doylestown Hospital would become the seventh Penn Medicine hospital. In addition to its three Philadelphia hospitals – the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, and Pennsylvania Hospital – Chester County Hospital, Lancaster General Health, and Princeton Health are part of UPHS, having joined in 2013, 2015, and 2018, respectively.

The flagship of Doylestown Health, Doylestown Hospital is a community teaching hospital with 247 beds and a medical staff of more than 435 physicians providing care in over 50 specialties, including "advanced surgical procedures, innovative medical treatments, and comprehensive specialty services."

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An $11 billion enterprise, Penn Medicine consists of UPHS and the university's Perelman School of Medicine.

Thursday's announcement comes the same day as a report estimating that hospitals across Pennsylvania have grappled with $8.1 billion in pandemic-related expenses in addition to staffing vacancies of nearly 30% statewide.

The joint report by the Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council, or PHC4, and the Hospital and Healthsystem Association of Pennsylvania, whose president, Nicole Stallings, told reporters Thursday that nearly 40% of the commonwealth's hospitals are in the red and 13% were functioning in a way that is “not sustainable.”

Doylestown Health is also in the process of selling its 532-unit Pine Run retirement community to another not-for-profit group based in York County, Presbyterian Senior Living (PSL), after reporting in early 2023 an operating loss of $24.34 million over a 12-month period ending Sept. 30, 2022.

Doylestown Health announced it was looking for a buyer for Pine Run last February and last March it entered into a non-binding Letter of Intent for Dillsburg-based PSL to assume ownership.

The potential deal is the latest in changes that could come in the health network landscape in Bucks County

Reports from late last month also revealed that the Lower Bucks Hospital in Bristol Township was one of three Philadelphia-area facilities that owner Prime Healthcare Services Inc. might be selling for an unknown amount.

This article originally appeared on Bucks County Courier Times: Doylestown Health, and its Bucks County hospital, to join Penn Medicine