If you want to know what a hospital means to a community, just consider the impact when one is suddenly closed, as was the case when Tower Health shuttered two of them in 2022, both in Chester County: Brandywine Hospital in Coatesville and Jennersville Hospital in West Grove. To borrow a phrase from Joni Mitchell, sometimes you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.

A vibrant local hospital can be easy to take for granted, said Richard Newell, who joined Temple Health-Chestnut Hill Hospital as president and CEO in March, and Abhi Rastogi, president and CEO of Temple University Hospital.

Both sat down recently for a wide-ranging interview to discuss the status of improvements at Chestnut Hill since an alliance of Temple Health, Redeemer Health and Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine acquired the hospital in January 2023. They also disclosed ambitious plans for the future.

“When a community has a hospital and it closes for whatever reason, it has a severe impact in terms of access to health care, and it becomes very disruptive,” says Newell, previously president and CEO of Phoenixville Hospital/Pottstown Hospital-Tower Health before arriving at Chestnut Hill. “Sometimes communities don’t recognize how lucky they are to have a hospital close by and at their beck and call until they don’t have it anymore. No one thinks of a hospital until you need it – until you have that chest pain, and you think, where am I going to go? And it’s much better to go someplace five minutes away than 50 minutes away.”

Rastogi echoes that sentiment.

“While we (Temple) are a large inner-city hospital, we think of ourselves as a community-based hospital,” he says. And to see Chestnut Hill Hospital diminish its services and where it was ending up, it’s not what we wanted to see in this community.”

That, Rastogi explains, is why Temple and its partners stepped in to take over Chestnut Hill. They wanted to not only save the hospital, but to expand services. “We heard the voice of the community,” he says.

Since the acquisition, he adds, Temple has invested close to $10 million in service and infrastructure upgrades – from planned expansions of primary care and the lung center to the recent addition of a new state-of-the-art cancer care infusion center to a significant reduction in emergency department wait times. Those continuing improvements include the intangibles visitors might take for granted, including higher-quality meals served in the cafeteria. 

Other new or expanded services include urology, thoracic and vascular surgery, ophthalmology, neurology, pulmonary cardiology and medical oncology. Some of those services are intended for initial patient intake and follow-up only, with complex procedures performed at some of Temple’s other campuses, such as Fox Chase Cancer Center. But in virtually all cases, patients will be seeing Temple physicians. 

Patients might have to drive more than 20 or 30 miles, Rastogi says, to receive some services that are otherwise available only at Chestnut Hill. Temple’s vision is to make Chestnut Hill a destination hospital. Although the lion’s share of patients are coming from Chestnut Hill, Mt. Airy, Germantown, and nearby Eastern Montgomery County communities, many are coming from out of state, he adds. 

All of these improvements have added up to increased income for the hospital, he says. Better service leads to a better bottom line. 

Newell, who is on point at the hospital to oversee those changes, launched his healthcare career as a physical therapist before moving on to administration. He was an athlete in college and suffered a severe ankle injury that required surgical reconstruction.

“As soon as the surgery was over and I came out of a cast, I had some intense physical therapy,” he recalls. “I was going three times a week, and I started to build a relationship with the therapists. I noticed how much they loved their jobs. I was in pharmaceutical training at the time, and I wasn’t particularly happy, and I just started asking them questions. Although I had a surgeon who did great work on me, it was my physical therapist who got me back to the quality of life I really wanted. So, I made the choice to become a physical therapist, and I am really happy that I did it. I kept my license and I occasionally do per diem work just because I love patient care.”

Over time, more and more administrative duties kept coming Newell’s way, and eventually, he transitioned to full-time administration. 

Newell saw the chance to lead Chestnut Hill as a kind of homecoming. 

“My wife was born at this hospital, her brother was born at this hospital and her uncles were born at this hospital, so it has been in her family for a long time,” Newell says. “And speaking as someone in the healthcare field, Chestnut Hill has always been a known entity.”

And now Temple sees it as an opportunity to demonstrate what can be possible when a small community hospital starts to offer the kind of world-class services typically associated with much larger hospitals. “And they didn’t just say it, they’ve been doing it since the year and a half they’ve been here,” Newell says. 

Those higher-level resources can help support the day-to-day service that provides patients with safe, high-quality care, but doesn’t generate profits. “So it really comes down to how do we make a difference? Not just for the patients who are coming here, but for the supporting cast who are coming to work every day to provide that care,” Newell says. “That’s what motivates me – just making a positive difference.”