ChristianaCare won Tuesday’s bankruptcy auction for five Crozer outpatient locations
If the Delaware company completes the deal, it will significantly increase its presence in Delaware County, where the nonprofit is building two micro-hospitals.
ChristianaCare won Tuesday’s bankruptcy auction for five of Crozer Health’s outpatient locations, the nonprofit health system confirmed Wednesday.
Multiple sources said ChristianaCare’s winning bid was $50 million, topping Main Line Health.
The auction win by Delaware’s largest health system allows ChristianaCare to step into Crozer’s leases at buildings in Broomall, Glen Mills, Media, and Havertown. Crozer has two locations in Glen Mills.
The purchase price includes some equipment and furnishings, but not the buildings, which are owned by unrelated real estate firms. In addition to physician offices, the locations offer outpatient surgery and imaging services.
The auctioned sites were attractive to bidders because patients at those sites typically have better health insurance than the lower-income residents of Chester and nearby communities that depended on Crozer-Chester Medical Center for care, according to healthcare executives familiar with the market.
The deal is subject to court approval, but Prospect has not yet filed a bankruptcy court motion to schedule the hearing. ChristianaCare said it expected the sale to happen quickly. The system said in its announcement to Crozer doctors and other employees at the locations that it plans to hold a town hall in the coming days.
If ChristianaCare completes the deal, it will significantly increase its presence in Delaware County, where it is building two micro-hospitals, in Aston and likely in Springfield, and where it already has a medical office in Concordville that recently expanded neurology services.
In 2022, ChristianaCare launched a bid to expand in Delaware County. It had a preliminary agreement to acquire all of Crozer Health from its for-profit owner Prospect Medical Holdings Inc., but decided not to go through with it after exploring the financial condition of the health system as well as the physical state of its neglected hospitals.
That year also marked the start of Crozer’s unraveling during a period of severe financial distress for most health systems, as COVID-19’s omicron variant threatened to overwhelm hospitals.
A temporary closure of Springfield Hospital early in the year soon became permanent. That fall the Pennsylvania Department of Health ordered Prospect to close the Delaware County Memorial Hospital emergency department because the facility lacked staff for X-rays and other imaging services. The hospital never reopened.
Even before California-based Prospect Medical Holdings Inc. filed for bankruptcy protection in January, state and local elected officials were trying to secure financial support from local nonprofit health systems for a new nonprofit that would take over the Crozer system.
But officials failed to get enough support from healthcare nonprofits.
Taylor Hospital in Ridley Park closed the last week of April. Crozer-Chester Medical Center in Upland followed May 2.