Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and Virtua continue health-care partnership

Since 2011, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and Virtua, the biggest health system in South Jersey, have been partners in pediatric care.

The partnership started with Children's doctors providing services at Virtua hospitals in Voorhees and Mount Holly. Children's opened a specialty care center in June 2012 next to the new Virtua hospital in Voorhees.

In the year ended June 30, children had 33,133 encounters with Children's Hospital physicians - an average of 91 a day - at Virtua locations, Children's Hospital chief executive Steven M. Altschuler said Friday at a meeting of the Chamber of Commerce of Southern New Jersey.

Altschuler and Children's have no intention of stopping with Virtua. Children's plans to spend $24 million on a facility on the new campus of the University Medical Center of Princeton at Plainsboro. Children's also provides cardiac care at St. Peter's University Hospital in New Brunswick, N.J.

"We see all of New Jersey hopefully becoming part of this regional network of pediatric care," Altschuler said.

Altschuler also said he would like to move into New York City, but - unable to resist the joke - said he was unsure about whether he would be able to get across the George Washington Bridge.

"I didn't say that," he then said with a laugh.

Richard P. Miller, Virtua's president and CEO, and Altschuler spoke at the chamber breakfast about what makes the relationship between Virtua and Children's work.

Both said that each organization had to give ground to the other, to make sure each side won.

For example, Virtua agreed to turn over the operation of its neonatal intensive care unit to Children's. Children's agreed to perform low-dose imaging, which is recommended to prevent excess radiation on children, in Voorhees, when it would have been easier to send the patients to Philadelphia.

Those compromises helped even out revenue gains, Miller said.

More opportunities for such balancing acts are expected. "We keep finding more things to do together," Altschuler said.

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