What’s going on with the Crozer Health System?!
Status Report: One year without Hospitals
In 2016, Prospect Medical Holdings, a for-profit private equity firm, purchased Crozer Health, the main healthcare system in Delaware County. Immediately, Prospect began looting the hospital system, making the situation worse and worse for workers and patients. They closed Springfield Hospital in 2020, followed by Delaware County Memorial Hospital in 2022 and at the same time shuttered essential services at Taylor and Crozer-Chester. Then Prospect filed bankruptcy in January 2025. On May 2, 2025, Prospect shut down the two remaining hospitals, Taylor and Crozer-Chester. Wall Street investors stole hundreds of millions of dollars from our communities, shut down our hospitals and walked away with no penalties and no concerns whether community members lived or died.
Impact:
- Care for over half a million residents’ was thrown into chaos
- 2,600 people lost their employment
- Prospect is threatening to destroy 460,000 medical records
- Lost our busiest Emergency Department, behavioral health intake center and only inpatient services in the county, the only trauma center, renowned burn unit and other speciality services
- Delaware County is now a maternal and infant health care desert
- Riddle Hospital is beyond capacity with long wait times and is overwhelmed by patient needs
In the past year, all Crozer hospitals were sold at fire sale prices for pennies on the dollar. One hospital was sold for non-healthcare use. The other three were sold to private, for-profit groups. None of these private groups have any experience running hospitals.
Delaware County Memorial Hospital: Sold for $600,000
- Sold to Upper Darby School District. Upper Darby, 6th most populated municipality in PA, remains without any prospect of a hospital opening.
Taylor Hospital: sold for $1 million & Springfield Hospital: sold for $1 million
- Bought by Todd Strine and his real estate investment firm, KQT Aikens Partners, which also owns a local ambulance service, Keystone Quality Transport. Todd Strine came into ownership of Keystone Quality Transport only after his father, Walter M Strine Jr was barred from participating in Medicare after numerous patient care violationsat their nursing home facilities in Media. While the news has applauded that KQT Aikens is a local firm, many remain sceptical of their for-profit motives.
Crozer-Chester: Sold for $10 million
- Chariot Equities is a healthcare real estate development firm. Allaire specializes in nursing homes and rehabilitation centers, with a reputation for “turning around troubled long-term care facilities in other states”. However the company notably has several facilities in PA, NJ, and VT with high turnover rates, and serious complaints about systemic neglect and abuse in Vermont facilities. While Crozer-Chester had the county’s busiest Emergency Room and provided the many crucial services for the county, the new owners have made vague references to finding a “right-sized redevelopment strategy” raising serious concerns that only a fraction of the previous care may return. In January 2026, news broke about the shuttered Crozer-Chester Emergency Department being used for police dog training.
So what now? In the past 5 years, 26 hospitals in Pennsylvania have closed. We see mergers and closures by both for-profit and non-profit owners alike. This leaves residents without access to ongoing care. Others have cut back essential services, resulting in psychiatric, emergency and maternity care deserts.
In place of long standing community institutions, microhospitals are being built with 10-15 inpatient beds, specialty care that is more profitable for the owner, and minimal inpatient treatment options. Microhospitals are being marketed on a state and local level as the answer to unsustainable healthcare costs, but they limit comprehensive healthcare while shifting services to outpatient. As community services have been defunded over the past few decades, there are limited resources available to people.
Although the industry and policy makers use workforce shortages as another reason hospitals are closing, the underfunding and closure of nursing schools is often unmentioned. For other staff at hospitals, including social workers, nursing assistants and therapists, base pay is also often inadequate.
As Delaware County nears the disastrous one year mark without our hospitals, Put People First! PA is asking what do YOU need in your local hospital?
Raise your voice. Join Put People First! PA to fight back for our human right to healthcare. Click here to learn more about the actions Put People First! PA has taken to demand our hospitals reopen as community-run public hospitals. Join us as we lift up our stories and Put People First!
Download the Status Report PDF here.