We know that patients want to be close to their homes and families when they’re dealing with serious illnesses, and one of our chief goals is to provide new options to fit together the best and most convenient plan of care for patients no matter where they live.
Over the past five years, we’ve been excited to bring Chester County Hospital, Lancaster General Health, and Princeton Health into Penn Medicine, but that’s only one way in which we’ve grown our footprint to help more patients across the region. We’ve also formed several unique strategic alliances by partnering with hospitals that are well-established leaders within local communities across Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Each time, we’ve worked together to identify needs and opportunities that bring together the best we both can offer. These alliances are powerful forces for providing exceptional community-based care.
Take our alliance with Virtua Health, for example, which began in the fall of 2015 with a focus on cancer and neurosciences care. Virtua is a trusted, nationally recognized health system that’s a home base for patients across South Jersey. More than 4,000 patients are diagnosed with cancer there each year. Now, through the programs and pathways implemented by the Penn Medicine-Virtua alliance, those patients have new, enhanced options to ensure the best possible outcome.
Historically, access to clinical trials has been available primarily through academic medical centers, which limits the number of patients who can benefit from these leading-edge approaches. Penn Medicine excels in developing and testing new therapies for cancers of all kinds, from personalized, cell-based treatments to precise radiation to minimally invasive surgical approaches. Through our work with Virtua, the old model has changed, with the opening of numerous clinical trials at Virtua through the Penn Medicine Virtua Cancer program, offering new options for patients with breast, lung, and gynecologic cancers, among others. Several hundred patients each year are now participating in these types of trials.
When patients do need to visit one of our Philadelphia hospitals for treatment — specialty care like bone marrow transplants, for instance — we’ve made it seamless through a nurse navigation program which coordinates care between Virtua and Penn.
Two Virtua-based Penn Medicine neurosurgeons have launched new programs for specialized brain and spinal surgery; together, they now provide care to about 1,000 new patients each year. Penn Medicine also supported Virtua’s need to add a microvascular plastic surgeon to help breast reconstruction patients. In addition, our joint-venture radiation therapy program offers crucial convenience for patients who often require frequent visits for treatment over the course of several weeks or months.
The alliance has also enhanced care for time-sensitive conditions like stroke, with the number of patients who’ve needed to be transferred to other hospitals from Virtua emergency departments falling by half since the alliance’s inception. The majority of patients are now able to receive their care locally, including initial care and follow up by Penn neurosurgeons at Virtua.
In each case, patients received the care they needed through a unique combination, benefitting from superb Virtua facilities and care near their homes along with advanced expertise from Penn Medicine surgeons.
Our most recent alliance, with Mercy Health System of Southeastern Pennsylvania and St. Mary Medical Center, expands these ideas into new areas like cardiology, with a focus on the development of joint clinical care programs in Bucks County and the surrounding areas. A fresh slate of population health initiatives to improve health care throughout the Greater Philadelphia region will also be a focus of this partnership, exploring gaps in preventive care and providing improved access to care for patients with high-risk, high-cost health conditions in West Philadelphia and beyond.
These ventures bring out creative collaborations and spark the best ideas from experts in every aspect of health care in our communities. And all of these programs save patients time and improve convenience, putting innovative medicine for both routine and complex medical care in reach without lengthy rides by car or public transportation. Enabling patients and their families to invest in spending more time together at home is good medicine, too.