Doylestown Travel

suburban hospitals to learn to compete with their counterparts in large cities

Ten years ago, four hospitals in Bucks County and Eastern Montgomery had cardiac catheterization and electrophysiology labs. Less had been diagnosed with advanced cancer and care. And the robotic surgery has been science fiction.

Today, most local hospitals have at least two cardiac catheterization laboratories. Most have open fight against cancer, cardiac care, imaging centers and orthopedic diagnosis. And at least two have robotic surgery programs.

Within a decade, at least six radiation oncology centers have opened within 20-mile eastern suburbs of Bucks and Montgomery, a seventh is scheduled to open next year in Doylestown.

day surgery are routine. Next month, another Bucks County hospital will open a hyperbaric oxygen chamber used in the treatment of wounds.

Some hospitals participating in clinical trials of new drugs or medical devices testing for large pharmaceutical companies.

The specialty of advanced medical care as Philadelphia commuters once found only in large urban hospitals and schools is as close as their back yards well maintained.

"A tonne of primary health care is done by experts - which is why health care is so expensive," said Tom Getzen, a professor of risk management and insurance health care at the Temple University Fox School of Business. "if you do not have specialty stuff, you can not get more."

As a result, suburban hospitals face pressure to expand and add profitable services and the latest technologies as a means of attracting the best professionals, higher standards of quality patient and support the less profitable but necessary, community services and unpaid care.

They also met with unexpected competition for shrinking dollars in health insurance: private doctors with the expertise and financial capacity to offer identical services.

To meet the growing demand for specialized care, some hospitals are urban and suburban forge alliances.

The center of radiation oncology under new Doylestown Hospital is a joint venture with the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania last year, Moss Rehab Philadelphia opened a 12-bed unit for inpatient rehabilitation to Bucks County Health Internal Aria Falls campus.

Philadelphia Other health care providers are migrating northward in pursuit of privately insured patients seeking lucrative elective procedures.

Fox Chase Cancer Center in years last has opened a $ 14 million radiotherapy - its first satellite in the suburbs - in Chalfont about 20 miles outside of Philadelphia main campus.

The Rothman Institute, the largest in the region in private practice orthopedic, recently opened its first specialty hospital Bensalem.

The building it occupies is the former Medical Comprehensive Breast Care Institute Bucks County ISD, another specialty hospital that closed less than two years after its 2007 opening because of insufficient patient volumes and financial issues.

Deregulation of proliferation

Industry analysts trace the explosion of suburban Pennsylvania specialty at the end of the certificate of need (CON) program in December 1996, which removed the requirement that public hospitals gain approval before adding or extending most of the services and medical technology. Some experts say business programs CON contain costs of health care.

Before deregulation of Philadelphia and its suburbs had four 15 Open heart surgery programs - all but three located in Philadelphia. In 2004, 24 hospitals have open heart surgery only half the hospitals located in Philadelphia.

Between 1997 and 2004, the Bucks County hospitals have more than quadrupled the number of open and closed operations at the heart of 190-853. During the same period, hospitals in Philadelphia have declined by 41 per cent of cardiac surgery from 8758-5143.

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