Philadelphia Medicine Fall/Winter 2019 - 28
p h i l a m e d s o c .org
Feature
No More Tuesdays
at Hahnemann:
The Painful Process of
Closing a Surgery Department
By: David E. Stein, MD, Professor and Chair of Surgery, Director of Operations,
Department of Ophthalmology
C
losing a department is like nothing I have ever experienced in my life. The sense
of loss is palpable everywhere, it is inescapable. It is so pervasive I need to walk
out and catch my breath numerous times throughout the day, as I find staying in
my office suffocating. As a leader of physicians, staff and residents, I have always strived
to keep an even emotional keel. You want to be calm, reassuring and encourage resilience
among your team. Of course, there are times it becomes impossible to maintain composure,
especially when something hits you so incredibly hard. The last time I cried at work was
when my friend and colleague Dr. Andres Castellanos was diagnosed with a terminal
illness, and I had to break the news to our department. When we experience tragedy, we
often understand how the tragedy occurred, but we still struggle with why it occurred.
In the case of our closure, I understand both how and why it occurred.
Drexel University College of Medicine's Department of Surgery was built on the legacy
of the Hahnemann Medical College and the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania,
which was renamed Medical College of Pennsylvania. In fact, I serve as the endowed
Alma Dea Morani chair of surgery. She graduated from the Woman's Medical College
in 1931, completed a surgical residency there in 1935 and rose to prominence as the
first female plastic surgeon in America. Hahnemann was known for many Philadelphia
firsts, from performing the area's first kidney transplant, to founding the first Level One
Trauma Center with the first helicopter MedEvac services and more recently being the
first hospital in the region to offer organ transplants from HIV positive donors to HIV
positive recipients via the HIV Organ Policy Equity (HOPE) Act. Yet none of the storied
history actually mattered.
If I offered you an opportunity to invest in a free-standing for-profit academic medical
center, with no feeder hospitals or regional referral base, that needed extensive capital
investment, that cared for the sickest and poorest patients of the city and had been losing
money for years, would you actually invest? Would you even think about it? Would you
expect a return on your investment? Is the not-for-profit world any different?
28 Philadelphia Medicine : Fall/Winter 2019
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Philadelphia Medicine Fall/Winter 2019
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