Brains, bones, hearts, and oncology | Philly Health Insider
Comparing what Penn hospital CEOs make
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Welcome to the latest edition of Philly Health Insider: an exclusive weekly look into Philadelphia’s health-care scene.
This week, we have news on how one health system is breaking with regional trends, updates on Philadelphia’s response to the opioid crisis, and a data analysis of salary numbers at Penn.
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— Aubrey Whelan and Abraham Gutman, Inquirer health reporters, @aubreywhelan and @abrahamgutman.
Our lead story this week looks at how a 125-year-old independent health system with two hospitals at the Jersey Shore is embarking on an ambitious new expansion plan — and bucking regional health-care trends.
There’s a pithy phrase that sums up health care’s biggest money makers: “brains, bones, hearts, and oncology.” So quipped a Philly health-care lawyer during a conference panel earlier this year.
This is now part of AtlantiCare’s playbook, which we break down with our colleague Harold Brubaker, who has covered the business of health care in the Philadelphia area for a dozen years.
Brains: AtlantiCare is breaking a long association with Jefferson neurologists to treat strokes, Alzheimer’s, dementia, and Parkinson’s disease by contracting with Global Neurosciences Institute, a group of brain surgeons who once worked at Jefferson.
Bones: A long-standing partnership with the Rothman Orthopaedic Institute.
Hearts: A cardiac-care tower is in the works at AtlantiCare’s Galloway campus.
Oncology: The Cleveland Clinic will be AtlantiCare’s partner to compete with cancer treatment giants like Penn and Fox Chase Cancer Center.
Beyond the “big four” revenue streams: AtlantiCare hospitals will soon become a branch campus for Drexel University’s medical school, which has been expanding its footprint since its main teaching hospital, Hahnemann University Hospital, closed in 2019.
Why is AtlantiCare taking this route? It’s not a geography move like Penn’s plan to buy Doylestown Health (bringing its total hospitals to seven) or a get-bigger play like Jefferson’s deal to acquire the Lehigh Valley Health System (creating a behemoth 30-hospital system). But AtlantiCare already tried to play the merger game. The system was acquired by Geisinger in 2015, and ended the partnership in 2020.
Now, Harold reports, AtlantiCare wants to take a new path.
The latest news to pay attention to
In an effort to raise more revenue, Tower Health will start using an outside company to collect insurance payments. Harold reports that 675 Tower employees will start working for Ensemble Health Partners, which says it can bump profits by as much as 3%.
Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle L. Parker on Monday proposed to pull $900,000 that funds syringe services at Prevention Point, the city’s largest syringe exchange, and has released a large-scale plan for opioid-ravaged Kensington that includes ramping up arrests of people who use drugs. Addiction doctors told Aubrey that they are worried.
Five years ago, Independence Blue Cross was the only option for area patients searching for insurers on Pennie, Pennsylvania’s Obamacare marketplace. This year, five other insurance companies competed with IBX for Southeastern Pa. patients.
An Einstein resident’s medical license was suspended after police say he assaulted a woman in his apartment and talked about killing people. The state medical board recently found that he “posed an immediate danger to public health and safety.”
This week’s number: $783,980.
That’s the difference in pay between the CEO of Penn Medicine’s flagship hospital — Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania — and the CEO of Penn’s Princeton satellite.
Three CEOs made more than $1 million: HUP’s Regina Cunningham, Chester County Hospital’s Michael Duncan, and Presbyterian Medical Center’s Michele Volpe (she’s now chief operating officer of the entire system).
The two lowest earners were Lancaster General Hospital’s John Herman and Princeton Health’s James Demetriades.
Kevin Mahoney, the system’s CEO, made more than double than any of the other hospital leaders — earning $2.8 million.
This week our colleague Sarah Gantz took a look at six months of state inspections at Temple’s various hospitals.
At Temple’s Episcopal Campus, she found, staff failed to document that they’d reviewed treatment plans for at least four of their behavioral and mental heath patients. In response, the hospital agreed to create a new template in its electronic health records system to make sure doctors complete these reviews.
Anxiety among children is rising — so our colleague Wendy Ruderman spoke to Temple psychologist Philip Kendall, who directs the health system’s Child & Adolescent Anxiety Disorders Clinic.
Kendall says it’s often effective to expose kids, in safe settings, to what they fear.
“You start by petting a small dog and you work your way up to petting the big dog. And when it’s over, the kids kind of strut, ‘Wow, I can do it now.’”
Tandigm CEO Frank Ingari is stepping down from the primary care management company, Harold reports. IBX’s parent company founded Tandigm in 2014 to contract with primary care physicians and aimed to help them save money on improved patient care. Last year, Penn acquired a $50 million minority stake in the company.
Ingari, Tandigm’s CEO since 2019, did not comment on where he’s headed next.
And one last interesting thing: Research on COVID and asthma
What are COVID’s long-term effects? That’s a question that many medical researchers will explore for the rest of their careers. A team of CHOP researchers recently published a paper in the journal Pediatrics looking at one key concern: Is there a link between COVID-19 and the development of asthma in children? They found the answer is probably not.
The study examined 27,000 children ages 1 to 16 within CHOP’s care network who were tested for COVID between March 2020 and February 2021, then followed over 18 months, and found that a positive COVID test didn’t significantly increase a child’s chances of developing asthma. However, children with other risk factors for asthma were more likely to get COVID.
That’s all for this week! To send you off, here is one last health-adjacent thing that charmed us in this week’s Inquirer: a playlist of classical music that you can run to, by our arts staff colleague Peter Dobrin. (Aubrey has never willingly run more than a mile but is a classical music fan and can confirm this playlist is full of bangers.)
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