Plans to bring Kennedy Health System into the big Thomas Jefferson University Hospital tent raise the usual cautions.
Keeping track of twists and turns in the South Jersey hospital landscape is like the old sales pitch at the ballpark gate for buying a scorecard: "You can't tell the players without a program."
The latest wrinkle: Kennedy Health System, with full-scale hospitals in Stratford, Cherry Hill and Washington Township, has agreed to be taken over by Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, one of Philadelphia's premier medical teaching institutions. "Jeff," as it's often known, has been involved in an acquisition spree lately, but mostly in Pennsylvania.
If the "merger" creates a rub-off effect of Jefferson's top-rated care on three community hospitals in Camden and Gloucester counties, that can only be a good thing. But, as with all of these moves, questions persist.
An immediate question involves Kennedy and two other institutions, Inspira Health Network and Rowan University -- which itself controls two medical schools, one of them an osteopathic one located next to Kennedy's Stratford hospital.
Earlier this month, Kennedy CEO Joseph W. Devine implored Rowan's trustee board not to sell to Inspira excess university property in Harrison Township so Inspira can construct a new hospital there. Devine considers Inspira a competitor. He said that approving the Inspira deal would undermine a successful teaching-hospital relationship between Kennedy and the Rowan School of Osteopathic Medicine. Enough trustees were swayed by Devine's argument that they postponed a vote on the land sale.
What now? If Devine and other Kennedy officials knew of the impending Jefferson deal when he addressed the Rowan trustees -- it had to have been in the works before last week's merger announcement -- it's the Rowan people who should feel betrayed. What happens to the wonderful mutual relationship when a different teaching hospital buys Kennedy?
Unless Devine assures that the Rowan SOM won't be left hanging without a hospital partner, the trustees should disregard what he told them Jan. 6. That doesn't mean the board should OK the land sale immediately, since other issues surround Inspira's hospital plan. But Devine's protestations no longer look to be a valid barrier to a sale.
At their Jan. 22 press event where Jefferson and Kennedy signed a "letter of intent," phrases like "partnership," "innovative model" and "revolutionize patient care" flowed from executives like saline solution from a runaway IV drip.
Guess what? No one involved is going to say: "This is all about trading on Jefferson's superior brand awareness, and giving Kennedy a way to fend off Cooper and Virtua," the South Jersey health care behemoths.
Regulators and patient advocates must thus view any Kennedy takeover with healthy skepticism, looking hard at platitudes about how care would be advanced. As we've stated before, it's the same kind of scrutiny state authorities must use before greenlighting Inspira's Harrison Township plans.
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