Springfield Township, Pa.-based Crozer Health has nixed plans to reopen its shuttered Springfield campus's emergency department and medical center as an orthopedic ASC, according to a March 5 report from the Philadelphia Business Journal.
Crozer initially announced plans for the ASC partnership in July following an $87.2 million loss in 2022. The system was in talks to finalize a joint venture deal with Newtown Square, Pa.-based Premier Orthopedics, an operator of three dozen practices in the region, to establish an ASC by converting former hospital rooms for outpatient procedures.
The emergency department originally closed its doors in January 2022 amid staffing shortages. For the past two years, the facility has been operating as an outpatient care center.
Now, the facility is expected to reopen as a micro-hospital with an emergency department as part of its ongoing fiscal turnaround efforts.
Ongoing ASC conversations happened for a year before the health system changed plans, according to the report.
"We had to pivot on that," Anthony Esposito, CEO of Crozer, told the Journal. "We had the engineers and architects look at [converting hospital space] for a surgery center and when all the costs came back, it was really cost prohibitive to shoehorn it into the hospital."
Crozer is still looking at the option of opening an ASC on the third floor of a vacant medical office building next door to the Springfield campus that was previously occupied by the health system's executive offices.