SAVE OUR
HOSPITALS
SAVE OUR
COMMUNITIES
Services Are Being Cut and Nurses Disrespected at Suburban Community Hospital and Lower Bucks Hospital. Nurses Are Speaking Out.
Suburban & Lower Bucks Hospitals are in danger.
Here's what you need to know.
STOP PRIME NOW.
California-based Prime Healthcare is the fifth largest for-profit health system in the United States operating 45 hospitals in 14 states, including Suburban Community Hospital and Lower Bucks Hospital in the greater Philadelphia area. Prime’s company slogan is “Saving Hospitals. Saving Jobs. Saving Lives.” But the truth is much darker than that: According to numerous lawsuits alleging widespread fraud (see “Investigations of Prime”); local, in-hospital data, and firsthand accounts from nurses at the bedside in Prime-owned hospitals, Prime routinely:
CLICK HERE TO SIGN OUR PETITION AND URGE PRIME TO SUPPORT AND RESPECT OUR NURSES AND OUR PATIENT COMMUNITIES
Roughly 96 RNs at Suburban Community Hospital in East Norriton have been working without a new contract with owner Prime Healthcare – the California-based, for-profit owner of three hospitals in the Philadelphia area – for nine long months. Since their contract expired on October 12, 2023, the nurses have learned: 1) that Prime was hoping to sell all of its Philadelphia-area hospitals, and, when that didn’t work out 2) that Prime would convert Suburban into a micro-hospital.
The professional futures of the nurses at Suburban and the future of what services Suburban will provide for the community are at stake. Despite news of the conversion, Prime is refusing to add protections to the Union contract that would ensure the staff and patients are taken care of during the transformation from a full-fledged critical care hospital into a micro-hospital.
Prime is proposing to discontinue all surgical services and shutter the ICU. They want ER patients to rely on vague transfer agreements if they need surgical or ICU care. Hospital transfers can routinely take several hours, endangering patients’ lives. If these plans are realized, healthcare professionals will lose their jobs and the basic medical services provided at Suburban – the services medically vulnerable Norristown-based families have relied on for decades – will cease.
Prime Healthcare, a California-based corporate umbrella for dozens of U.S. hospitals, including Lower Bucks Hospital in Bucks County, is an out-of-state actor clearly unconcerned with the health and well-being of the people of Montgomery County or with the nurses who provide their patient communities with care.
Our communities deserve better than Prime.
They deserve better than Dr. Prem Reddy.
Prime's Business Model
Prime's business model is the exploitation of every group involved in the delivery of healthcare, including doctors, nurses, patients, hospital workers, the government, and insurance companies. They do this at the expense of patient care and the surrounding community.
Our communities need hospitals that prioritize patients over profits, hospitals that value frontline caregivers and the retention of skilled, experienced nursing.
About
DR. PREM REDDY,
FOUNDER OF PRIME HEALTHCARE
Four years after founding Prime Healthcare in 2001, Dr. Reddy was accused by nurse managers of using “unethical” means to improve hospital finances. The managers claimed Dr. Reddy turned away uninsured patients in need of care, since uninsured patients earned hospitals much less money than insured patients.
In one instance, Reddy allegedly discharged an uninsured patient with kidney failure and suggested that the patient receive care at a county facility where they could be seen for free. State regulators found that medical personnel did not ensure that discharging the patient “would not create a medical hazard.”2 Reddy testified that he took “reasonable measures”3 to increase hospital profits and was “misunderstood.” The two nurses were awarded more than $850,000, but the case was declared a mistrial due to juror misconduct and was later settled for an unknown amount.
