Temple U. to aims to boost position in health market with new hospital

The 60-bed children's hospital will not threaten the University's children's hospital, according to officials. In a move which will further saturate the already-competitive Philadelphia health care market, Temple University recently unveiled plans to open a new 60-bed children's hospital in North Philadelphia this January. But the $31 million facility will not threaten the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, which is affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania Health System, according to Steven Altschuler, pediatrics chairperson at Penn's Medical School. CHOP was recently recognized as the second-best children's hospital in the country by U.S. News and World Report, and Altschuler said it "enjoys a dominant position in the city's health care market." He explained that the small size of Temple's hospital will prevent it from having the resources to handle serious injuries or illnesses, adding that it will "probably end up sending critical care patients to CHOP." But Temple's new facility will compete directly with St. Christopher's Hospital for Children, a hospital affiliated with the Allegheny University Health System and located less than a mile from the Temple site. Temple's Medical School had trained its pediatrics students at St. Christopher's before the hospital joined the Allegheny system in 1991. Over the next six years, the two health systems quarreled over the future of the Temple personnel working at the hospital. In settling the dispute, doctors were forced to choose between being affiliated with Temple or Allegheny. Only 16 of the hospital's doctors chose to remain with Temple, with the other 60 switching to Allegheny. Temple officials said the feud with Allegheny spurred their decision to build the new facility. "We are building the new children's hospital because we didn't want our primary pediatrics site owned by another heath care system," a Temple spokesperson said. But health care experts question whether Philadelphia needs another children's hospital. "They're going to have trouble filling their beds and attracting the best pediatricians, because you only need so many services in the city," said Norm Feinman, an independent pediatrician in Broomall, Pa. Altschuler added that Temple's facility seems particularly unnecessary at a time when preventive medicine is reducing the number of children who are hospitalized. And St. Christopher's chief executive officer, Carter Bland, stressed the new Temple facility "just doesn't make any sense." But Howard Grant, CEO and chief medical officer of Temple's new hospital, said he remains confident that there is room for a new children's hospital in the Philadelphia health care market. He stressed that St. Christopher's is unable to meet the health care needs of all the children in North Philadelphia, where "nobody can argue that kids are getting everything they need." Grant added that he has already hired several pediatricians for the new hospital and is looking to obtain the services of about a dozen more specialists by partnering with other hospitals.

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