Temple Health to Build Ft. Washington Facility

John George 

Senior Reporter- Philadelphia Business Journal

Temple University Health System is getting ready to make another splash in the suburbs as it continues efforts to expand beyond North Philadelphia.

Renovations are under way for a $4 million medical complex in Fort Washington, Pa., that will house an urgent-care center along with primary-care and specialty-care services.

“You can call it an ambulatory-care center; some people call it a medical mall,” said Adam Edelson, Temple health system’s vice president for business strategy and development. “We are working to become more accessible to local communities in local markets. … We want to make accessing the care Temple provides more convenient.”

The 29,000-square foot medical center will occupy two floors in an existing office building on Pennsylvania Avenue near where the Pennsylvania Turnpike and Route 309 meet. The property’s landlord is paying an unspecified amount toward the needed renovations.

The first floor will be home to Temple’s fourth ReadyCare urgent-care center, the first of which opened in 2009 at its former Northeastern Hospital in the city's Port Richmond section when that facility was converted to outpatient care. The ReadyCare centers provide fast treatment for health conditions that need immediate attention, but are not life-threatening. Other space will be used for primary-care and specialty services in area such as orthopedics, cardiology, vascular care, neurology, neurosurgery, urology and bariatrics. Temple also plans to open a diabetes center at the site.

“We’ll be bringing to Fort Washington the type of high-end care that people will travel for when they need it,” Edelson said. “We are not looking to [duplicate] care people can get at their local community hospitals.”

Edelson said Temple selected Fort Washington as the site for its latest health center because its research showed the people in the area were going to local hospitals and into Center City and beyond for health services.

“We saw this market as a tremendous opportunity for us,” he said.

Temple health system’s push beyond North Philadelphia began when Dr. Larry Kaiser took over as CEO in 2011. In his first interview with the Business Journal after taking office, Kaiser said one of his goals was to build the Temple health-care brand by establish delivery sites throughout the entire region. “We want to plant the Temple ‘T’ in a number of locations,” he said.

During the past two years, Temple health system has:

• Opened offices in Oaks, Pa., with a lung center program and orthopedic services;

• Opened a ReadyCare urgent-care center in Northeast Philadelphia at site where it also provides orthopedic-care services;

• Opened a women’s-care center at Solis University in Elkins Park;

• Opened a ReadyCare Center in Jenkintown; and

• Added gastroenterology and neurology care at its Center City office, which already provide urology services.

Full story: http://tinyurl.com/o2pd4gc

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