Saving a family medicine residency program serving Delaware County
The announcement of the planned closure of Crozer’s Family Medicine department, which serves a large population of low-income patients, prompted residents to fight to keep their patients and practice with a move to a new home at Penn Medicine Chester County Hospital.
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A notification with breaking news streaked across the phone. Gaby Borodyansky realized her life was about to take a turn as she walked the halls of a museum while on vacation this past spring.
“I just looked around for a second and I was like, ‘what do you mean?’” says Borodyansky, who was, at the time, a second-year resident in the well-regarded family medicine residency program at Crozer Health.
The news rocketed around the health care industry and the Philadelphia region. The corporate owners of Crozer were declaring bankruptcy and shutting down the health system, based in Delaware County, Pa. The implications for regional health care were massive; for Borodyansky it meant her training was at risk and, more importantly to her, the patients under her care might suddenly lose access to a doctor.
Crozer’s Family Medicine department served a large population of low-income patients, mostly insured by Medicaid, in a part of Delaware County with few other choices for care. Collectively, Crozer’s family medicine physicians, and in particular the residents, were a primary care lifeline for nearly 25,000 patients a year who received their care at family health clinics in Upper Darby and Springfield.
Crozer’s financial stress threatened to end the residents’ ability to work in these clinics and to continue their training together. If the residency program closed, the “orphaned” trainees would be left to scatter to whatever program would take them in.
As news about the future of Crozer became more fraught, these residents focused on what they could still control: their commitment to the welfare of their patients.
“We all felt like we owed it to them to provide the best care that we could in that moment, no matter what, no matter the resources,” says third-year resident Ansu Thomas.
Today, Borodyansky and her fellow residents are still together treating the same patients after their training program found a new home at Penn Medicine Chester County Hospital at the beginning of June. Transitioning the active residency program—more than a year before a new program was slated to begin at the hospital—was a journey involving many late nights, unforeseen regulatory obstacles, and a lot of creative optimism.
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