Princeton HealthCare System and the University of Pennsylvania Health System announced today that they have signed a letter of intent to pursue a partnership.
Princeton Healthcare announced in June 2015 that it would begin evaluating partnership opportunities to ensure its continued success in the future. Since then, officials said they considered 17 potential partners.
“Our board of trustees showed remarkable foresight by contemplating a shared future even as we remained clinically and financially strong as an independent system,” said PHCS President and CEO Barry Rainier. “We received considerable interest, and Penn Medicine stood out as the best fit. Now we will focus on crafting an agreement that promotes the best interests of our patients and the community we have served for almost a century as well as our employees and physicians. We are confident this partnership will enable PHCS to continue providing our patients superior access and quality close to home with the support of advanced capabilities of a healthcare system that is widely recognized as one of the country’s best.”
“We are excited to partner with PHCS and examine alternatives to provide the Princeton community and people of central New Jersey better access to our world-class patient care programs,” said Ralph Muller, CEO of the University of Pennsylvania Health System.
Rabner said PHCS considered the organizational capabilities that have enabled Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine consistently to rank among the top five medical schools in National Institutes of Health funding and the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania to be recognized as an Honor Roll Hospital in the US News & World Report Best Hospitals ratings for nearly 20 years.
“Penn Medicine’s strong financial position and comprehensive scope of services will add to Princeton HealthCare System’s financial security and ability to enhance clinical programs and develop facilities to improve access to care and superior patient quality for the community we serve. Given Penn Medicine’s expertise in information technology, this partnership will strengthen our efforts to install an integrated electronic medical record necessary to support our population health initiatives.”
Today’s announcement is a preliminary step. The two organizations will now conduct due diligence and negotiate definitive agreements, officials said. This process is expected to take several months.They will then seek regulatory approvals, a process which could take up to a year to complete.
Krystal Knapp is the founding editor of Planet Princeton. Follow her on Twitter @krystalknapp. She can be reached via email at editor AT planetprinceton.com. Send all letters to the editor and press releases to that email address.
Good foresight, seeking a partner before failure is obvious, although of all the possible choices for partners this seems the least positive from a public health standpoint.
Why is this the least positive? The choice of UPenn seems excellent as it gives area residents access to their expertise here instead of needing to travel to Philadelphia.
I lived in Philadelphia for a number of years, every neighborhood has a hospital. People choose “favorite” hospitals based on intangibles, and off all the people I knew, the only folks who preferred Penn were alumni of the school. This in itself is my intangible.
I preferred hospitals with the best survival rates in particular fields, and the best patient relationships. Penn had neither. They do have a unique Veterinary College, but in the one circumstance I had to have treatment at Penn hospital I was unimpressed on every level.
My personal preference, which has no bearing on Princeton’s decision, would have been Jefferson. Followed by several others before Penn. But maybe this was the best Princeton could do.
This is pretty anecdotal there big guy. It would be interesting to see the data you site on survival rates.
I think it’s fair to say that when one’s life is on the line most folks would prefer to be treated by the physicians at Penn or Jeff over any other hospital in the Philadelphia area. Not even close.
It is certainly anecdotal. I thought that was the purpose of a comments section.
The data is available to the public, it changes every year, but my biggest red flag was that the only folks who chose UPenn first were graduates of UPenn. My sample was limited to the three or four hundred people I spoke with about hospitals, geographically they were diversified throughout Philadelphia. It might appear natural for a Penn grad to prefer Penn, even when there were a dozen closer hospitals, but some people in University City should have preferred Penn and did not. As I said, intangible, a red flag, something is wrong.
Talking about hospitals to 300 to 400 people. Wow. You must be fun on a date.
But, more to the point, not a statistically based study. So not very useful.
Useful indeed, just not the language you prefer. You cannot measure the intangibles involved statistically, as I have suggested in every reply to you. This is my impression, what I, as a current resident of the Princeton Hospital’s service area, think about the proposed merger. Do you have something to counter, or are you simply being argumentative?
And yes, while my wife was dying of cancer I was a lousy date.
What does this agreement mean for future patients of Princeton HealthCare?
I prefer U Penn for some specialties where I have found a breadth of knowledge & experience and curiosity about the condition that I have found is unfortunately lacking in several medical practices more local to Princeton. But the trek to Philly can mean a half or even whole day off work, so I’m hoping that this alliance means that I can stay with my favorite Philly doctors for analysis and critical decisions, but maybe for some follow up procedures and/or testing or lower touch processes I may be able to get some of the more generic stuff done here, and still have it sync’ed up with the U Penn system.