A sad end to a storied hospital.

I’m going to bet Samuel Hahnemann, the founding physician of the Homeopathic Medical College of Pennsylvania, never envisioned his hospital closing. It’s been 171 years since opening its doors and in just a few weeks, it will close its doors forever. A very sad end to a storied Philadelphia hospital.

Through the years it distinguished itself through its work as a Level 1 trauma center, a cardiac specialty hospital and a medical school. But then AHERF came knocking followed by Tenet and most recently American Academic Health Systems–run by Joel Freedman. And now Freedman has decided that the financial losses are too great and he’s closing.

Barely a mention has been made by Freedman of the hundreds of jobs to be lost and even worse, of the hundreds, if not thousands of patients who have and continue to seek care at the facility. Nurses? Doctors? Patients? What do you think this is, a hospital?

I wonder why Freedman is not being charged with abandonment. According to legal dictionaries, abandonment is the wrongful cessation of the provision of care to a patient by a health care provider, usually a physician or a nurse. (2) unilateral termination of care without the patient’s consent or knowledge, or without adequate notice, while the patient is still in need.

Certainly feels like he is abandoning hundreds, if not thousands, of patients. This is obviously the worst-case scenario of a for-profit organization owning a health care facility. As I often (seems more often these days) say, “Follow the money.”

It’s a very sad time for Philadelphia and for the patients and healthcare providers associated with Hahnemann. My condolences.