Chester City agreed to a five-year, $2.8 million contract with VMSC Emergency Medical Services, a nonprofit that started providing ambulance services in the community after the closure of bankrupt Crozer Heath a year ago, the city and VMSC announced Monday.
During VMSC’s first year in Chester, the Lansdale organization had a $470,000 shortfall, chief executive Shane Wheeler said. The $2.8 million is expected to support operation of the services — including the cost of serving uninsured patients — and pay for equipment needs.
The ambulance company has responded to 8,324 calls since May 2, but 35% did not require transport to a hospital, Wheeler said. In many cases, the ambulance crew fulfills the function of primary care for residents.
“We’re assessing blood pressure or helping someone with their medication, helping people get up” from a fall, Wheeler said.
VMSC’s accomplishments in the first year reducing ambulance response time to about 5½ minutes from more than 12 minutes, according to Wheeler.
The contract requires VMSC to assign at least three basic ambulances to serve Chester and its direct neighbors, with two staffed 24 hours a day. The organization also must provide at least one commander with training in more advanced treatment.
The new owner of the shuttered Crozer-Chester Medical Center in Delaware County shared what he called an “aspirational” plan to restore healthcare services to the Upland facility at a town hall meeting Tuesday in Chester.
The vision includesreopening of the emergency department, creating a small hospital above the ED, and developing outpatient services — all operated by one or more local nonprofit health systems, Yoel Polack told a standing-room-only crowd of more than 200 at Widener University.
Polack isCEO of Chariot Allaire, the for-profitpartnership that paid $10 million for Crozer in January. His group has been talking to all the regional health systems for months and expects soon to begin “a study process with two and hopefully three of the major academic medical centers in the region,” he said.
That is expected to last up to 90 days, he said, “and hopefully at the end of that period, we’re going to be having some outline of partnership with the system.” Polack described his anticipated partner as an institution “you know and trust.”
The entire process could take two or three years after a partnership is formed, he said Polack, whose company is registered in Lakewood, N.J.
He provided no details on how much Chariot Allaire would be willing to invest to attract a health system to the site, where state-led efforts previously failed to savea major safety-net provider for Delaware County that closed last May amid the bankruptcy of its California-based owner, Prospect Medical Holdings Inc.
Chariot Allaire paid relatively little for the 64-acre campus, which gives the company a low cost basis for owning the site. But that doesn’t mean it will be easy to attract a partner at a time of thin to nonexistent profit margins for the region’s health systems.
“It does not seem like there’s an easy and obvious candidate,” said Dan Grauman, managing director at VMG Health, a national healthcare consulting firm.
“There’s no question there’s need for care and for services, said Grauman, who has decades of familiarity with the Philadelphia region’s healthcare market.
A welcome public meeting
During an hourlong question and answer session, residents expressed gratitude for the meeting with Polack and his senior medical adviser, Arthur Klein, a pediatric cardiologist who spent decades as an executive at nonprofit health systems in New York.
A town hall meeting Tuesday in Chester about plans for the former Crozer-Chester Medical Center drew a large crowd.Monica Herndon / Staff Photographer
“Many times things happen in our community, and we are the last to know, so you started off very, very well,” said Zulene Mayfield, chairperson of Chester Residents Concerned for Quality Living, a community group known for the fight to close alarge trash incinerator in the city.
Some residents pushed back againstPolack and Klein’s plans for a much smaller hospital than the more than 400 beds Crozer-Chester Medical Center had at its peak. During a March interview with The Inquirer, Klein suggested the new hospital could have 80 beds.
“You don’t want a hospital of the 1990s,” Klein said Tuesday.
The current hospital structure encompasses 750,000 square feet — now completely empty. Crozer’s shuttered ED took up 30,000 of the square feet. Chariot Allaire contemplates opening a hospital a tenth of the size of the old hospital.
Operating that hospitalcost way too much, Polack said. ”It also doesn’t meet the way medical care is done today, which is mainly on the outpatient side,” said Polack,who has worked in healthcare real estate development in New York.
Simone Development Cos., where Polack worked before striking out on his own, often collaborated on real estate deals with Montefiore, a health system in the Bronx that serves many patients with Medicaid insurance, Grauman said.
That experience is relevant to the effort here, he said, given that Crozer also served large numbers of people with Medicaid, which pays significantly lower rates than private insurers.
The role of local health systems
Before Prospect’s bankruptcy filing in January 2025, a few local health systems explored establishing a new nonprofit to take over Crozer-Chester Medical Center. Those talks continued during the bankruptcy, but failed to produce a solution.
The University of Pennsylvania Health System saidit remains at the table.
“We continue to work with committed partners to restore crucial healthcare services for Delaware County residents,” Penn said in a statement. “It’s important that any new models for the former Crozer-Chester site are built to be sustainable amid a rapidly changing healthcare landscape and persistent financial challenges.”
ChristianaCare, which plans to open a micro-hospital in Aston in June, is not in discussions with Chariot Allaire, it said, but supports “their efforts to expand access to quality heath care in Delaware County.”
Arthur Klein, senior medical adviser (left), and Yoel Polack, CEO of Chariot Allaire, greet attendees during a town hall in Chester on Tuesday.Monica Herndon / Staff Photographer
While Chariot Allaire is wooing health systems, the new owners of two other closed Crozer Health hospitals,Taylor and Springfield, are doing the same thing. Local investors paid $1 million each for those hospitals. Those low prices could allow the owners to offer below market rate leases to attract tenants.
Polack noted that if no local systems want to bring services to the Crozer site, he would look farther afield.
“We don’t control hospital systems and operators, but we are doing everything that we can to put the pieces together to illustrate the opportunity that we see here to those hospital systems,” he said.
The new owner of the defunct Crozer-Chester Medical Center wants to restore hospital and emergency services to the 64-acre campus that straddles Chester and Upland Township in Delaware County.
Newly formed Chariot Equities completed the $10 million purchase Wednesday. The for-profit entity said it expected within six months to have an agreement with a health system that would operate a “right-sized” hospital and emergency department at the facility that had been the county’s largest provider of those services before closing last year.
The idea is then to open the first phase within two years, Chariot said in a statement.
Chariot did not say how much it would spend on refurbishing Crozer-Chester, which had suffered from years of neglect under its two previous owners.
Chariot’s partner at Crozer-Chester is Allaire Health Services, a Jackson, N.J.-based for-profit operator of nursing homes.
The partners said they are in talks with regional and national nonprofit health systems regarding an operating partnership, but provided no details. The amount of money needed for the project would likely depend on what prospective tenants would want to do at the property.
“Our belief in Delaware County’s future, and the community’s need for sustainable healthcare access, made this an effort worth committing to well before the finish line,” said Yoel Polack, Chariot’s founder and principal.
Little is known about the new owners. Polack worked in healthcare real estate in the New York City area before setting his sights on redeveloping Crozer-Chester.
Federal records list Allaire’s CEO Benjamin Kurland as an owner of 20 nursing homes, including three in the Philadelphia area. Chariot’s statement said Allaire owns a total of 29 facilities in five states.
Main Line Health has been involved in discussions about reopening emergency services at three former Crozer hospitals — Crozer-Chester Medical Center, Springfield Hospital, and Taylor Hospital — at the request of state lawmakers and the property owners, Ed Jimenez, CEO of Main Line Health, said Wednesday at a Riddle Hospital event.
Jimenez said he would “entertain the concept” of restoring emergency services at one of the hospitals as part of a partnership with other health systems, but only if it can be done on a break-even basis.
All three of the former hospital buildings visited by Main Line officials are in poor condition and were stripped of medical equipment after the closures. Main Line’s experts estimated it would cost between $15 million and $20 million just to make the emergency department at Taylor functional, Jimenez said.
ChristianaCare, Delaware’s largest health system, considered acquiring Crozer in 2022. Instead, it took a different path to expansion in Southeastern Pennsylvania. It is planning to open two micro-hospitals in Delaware County. The nonprofit system also took over five former Crozer outpatient locations. Its credit rating was recently downgraded by one notch because of lower profitability.
The importance of Crozer-Chester
Crozer-Chester closed in early May during the bankruptcy of owner Prospect Medical Holdings Inc., a for-profit company based in California, and after the failure of government-supported efforts to form a new nonprofit owner for Crozer-Chester and other Crozer Health facilities.
Crozer-Chester was particularly important as a safety-net provider for a low-income area of Delaware County that has few other nearby options. The Crozer system, which had four hospitals, was the county’s largest health system and largest employer for many years.
Two local Democratic officials, State Rep. Leanne Krueger and Delaware County Council member Monica Taylor, said they were encouraged by the approach being taken by Chariot and Allaire.
At Taylor Hospital, the other Crozer hospital that closed last year, new owners are also looking for healthcare tenants. Local investors bought the Ridley Park facility for $1 million. It is less than four miles from Crozer-Chester.
The same group agreed last week to pay $1 million for Springfield Hospital, another facility that had previously shut down under Prospect ownership.
Pennsylvania’s new budget has $5 million in supplemental payments for the two Delaware County Hospitals that have seen significant increases in patient volumes since Crozer-Chester Medical Center and Taylor Hospital closed in the spring.
Main Line Health’s Riddle Hospital, near Media, is getting $3 million. The amount for Trinity Health Mid-Atlantic’s Mercy Fitzgerald Hospital, in Darby, is $2 million, according to budget documents.
The $5 million will be doubled by a federal match, said Democratic State Sen. Tim Kearney, who represents part of Delaware County. The $5 million is from a fund used to help hospitals the serve a large number of patients with Medicaid and used to go to Crozer Health, Kearney said Friday.
“Since Crozer’s shutdown in April, Riddle’s Emergency Department has experienced an unprecedented surge — 46% more patients than the same period last year, an increase of nearly 4,000 overall,“ the nonprofit said.
Main Line, which also owns Lankenau Medical Center, Bryn Mawr Hospital, and Paoli Hospital, said it has seen 55,000 patients from the Crozer market — a 15% increase over the same time period last year. That figure includes 8,000 patients who went to a Main Line facility for the first time, the health system said.
Trinity Health did not respond to a request for comment.
Shuttered hospitals in limbo
While Riddle and Mercy Fitzgerald have scrambled to accommodate patients who used to rely on Crozer Health, efforts are underway to bring healthcare services back to at least Taylor Hospital in Ridley.
A group from New Jersey called Chariot Allaire Partners LLC has agreed to pay $10 million for the former Crozer-Chester Medical Center in Upland but has not disclosed its plans. That facility served as a key safety provider for a low-income area of Delaware County.
A partnership of Restorative Health Foundation and Syan Investments won an auction for Springfield Hospital for $3 million, but it does not have support from township officials.
Delaware County legislators also obtained $1 million from the state to buy emergency department equipment if one of the closed hospitals, such as Taylor, reopens, Kearney said.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated with additional detail on the funding.
This suburban content is produced with support from the Leslie Miller and Richard Worley Foundation and The Lenfest Institute for Journalism. Editorial content is created independently of the project donors. Gifts to support The Inquirer’s high-impact journalism can be made at inquirer.com/donate. A list of Lenfest Institute donors can be found at lenfestinstitute.org/supporters.
Friday marks three weeks since the bankruptcy auction for Delaware County’s Crozer-Chester Medical Center and Springfield Hospital, and it’s not clear how much progress has been made.
Closing the sales depends in part on local authorities agreeing to tax deals that set the assessments at the transaction prices of $10 million and $3 million, respectively,for a limited period of time.
Upland Borough, which is home to much of Crozer-Chester, is working on a property tax agreement that will be filed in court, borough council president Christine Peterson said Thursday. “We anticipate that Upland Borough Council will take action in favor of that stipulation once it is complete,” she said.
A representative for Chester Upland School District did not respond to a request for comment Thursday.
If the school district also agrees to a tax resolution, a company called Chariot Allaire Partners LLC is clearto acquire the shuttered safety net hospital for $10 million.
Yoel Polack, who is principal of Chariot Equities and has been talking with local officials and prospective healthcare providers about plans forthe hospital, said last Tuesday that he expected to issue what he called a “comprehensive memo” on the property this week.
Polack said in an email Thursday that there was still no update, but he is hoping to have something in the next few weeks.
The backup bidder for Crozer-Chester is the same group that won the auction for Springfield. The auction led to Chariot increasing its offer by $3 million.
Both facilities are owned byProspect Medical Holdings, whose next bankruptcy hearing is scheduled for Tuesday. Items to be considered include Springfield Township’s lawsuit aiming to force Prospect to improve safety on the hospital campus that it closed in 2022.
Bankruptcy Judge Stacey Jernigan granted a temporary injunction blocking Springfield from taking any action against California-basedProspect.
Another topic is a proposed $1.5 million settlement of a lawsuit filed on behalf of Crozer employees who did not receive 60 days notice before losing their jobs in April and May when Prospect closed Crozer-Chester Medical Center and Taylor Hospital, which has since been sold. Federal law requires employers to provide two months notice of layoffs.
A stalemate in Springfield
Lawyers for Prospect identified Restorative Health Foundation and Syan Investments as the auction winner with a $3 million bid. But it appears a tax agreement that would assess the Springfield property at the purchase price is nowhere near completion.
“The township has no interest in agreeing to a tax deal without having a better understanding of the buyer’s intended use of the site and whether it aligns with the township’s comprehensive plan,” spokesperson Pete Peterson said in an email.
A representative for the winning bidders, Aminah Shabazz Perez, told the Delaware County Times recently that the buyer was in talks with two health systems about moving into the hospital, but one of them told township officials that was not true, Peterson said.
“In addition, the township already did its due diligence prior to the bankruptcy auction and engaged in discussions with representatives of different health systems,” he said. ”There was no interest in the property due to the cost of improvements the facility would need.“
Attempts by The Inquirer to reach Shabazz Perez have not been successful. Prospect did not respond to request for comment on the property tax situation.
The Springfield School Board would also have to agree to a tax settlement, but has not voted “on any proposed resolution of the outstanding tax appeals or the tax assessments relating to the Springfield Hospital and parking garage properties,” the school board’s solicitor Mark Sereni said Wednesday.
The face value of the Springfield School District’s latest claim in bankruptcy court is $1.43 million. Under an abandonment order signed on Oct. 14 by Jernigan, the district would receive a general unsecured claim, which is not likely to be worth much.
If Prospect abandons Springfield and Crozer-Chester, the municipalities would have to foreclose on the properties to collect any of the money Prospect owes them.
The winning bids at a bankruptcy auction were $10 million for Crozer-Chester Medical Center and $3 million for Springfield Hospital, ownerProspect Medical Holdings Inc. said in a court filing late Monday.
The California for-profit, which filed for bankruptcy protection in January, identified the top bidders from Friday’sauctionas Chariot Allaire Partners LLC for Crozer-Chester in Upland and Restorative Health Foundation and Syan Investments LLC for Springfield.
Prospect did not say in its filing when it expected the sales to be finalized. Both hospitals are currently closed.
Yoel Polack, who is in the group that wants to buy Crozer-Chester, initially declined to comment about plans for the property. “We are still working through final administrative details of the sale and will wait until next week to make any statements to the press,” he said in an email over the weekend.
Polack is identified on LinkedIn as principal at Chariot Equities, which describes itself on its website as a real estate investment and development company. Previously, Polack worked in healthcare real estate, such as medical office buildings, at Simone Development Cos. in New York.
Polack had an out-of-office reply on his email Tuesday, saying he would have no internet or phone access until Thursday.
The president of Upland Borough Council, Christine Peterson, did not respond to a request for comment Monday about the winning bidder.
No definitive information was available on Restorative Health Foundation and Syan Investments.
A phone number registered under the name Restorative Health Foundation in Philadelphia led to a home care agency called Restorative Home Care. The person who answered the phone Tuesday said she knew of no connection to a bid for Springfield Hospital. Another number for Restorative Health Foundation had a voicemail box that was full.
Restorative Health and Syan also participated in the Crozer-Chester auction, driving the winning bid up to $10 million from Chariot Allaire’s original $7 million offer. They were identified as the backup bidder for Crozer-Chester, in case Chariot Allaire doesn’t complete the purchase.
At Springfield, KQT Aikens Partners 2 LLC is the backup buyer. That involves the same group of local investorsthat bought Taylor Hospital for $1 million last month.
Prospect shuttered Crozer-Chester this spring, following the failure of government-led efforts to find a new, nonprofit owner. It had closed Springfield in 2022.
Prospect Medical Holdings Inc. had a $7 million bid for Crozer-Chester Medical Center and a $3 million bid for Springfield Hospital ahead of an auction held in the afternoon, an attorney for the bankrupt company said at a hearing Friday.
Neither the winning bidders nor the top bids were identified publicly after the auction. Prospect did not respond to a request for information about the prospective buyers. Community members have been pushing for the restoration of hospital services to Crozer-Chester in particular.
At the same hearing, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Stacey Jernigan approved Prospect’s plan to “abandon” the two shuttered Delaware County hospitals if the sales fail to close promptly because the properties have become a financial burden to the bankruptcy estate.
Prospect used a similar tactic last summer in the case of Crozer Health’s two other closed hospitals, Delaware County Memorial Hospital in Drexel Hill and Taylor Hospital in Ridley. Both of those hospitals have since been sold.
In a court filing Friday morning, Prospect said it had reached agreements with local tax authorities to set the assessments on Crozer-Chester and Springfield at the sale price for this year and next year.
The properties had elevated assessments because of Prospect’s financial maneuvers since the California for-profit acquired the county’s largest health system in 2016. The current assessment on Crozer-Chester is $114.6 million, according to public records. That figure is $10.9 million for Springfield
The filing also said school districts and others would accept general unsecured claims in the bankruptcy. Those claims are unlikely to have much value.
Much of Friday’s hearing on the abandonment motion was taken up with discussion of complications at Springfield. An attorney for Springfield Township said his client had not agreed to the tax deal outlined in the abandonment motion and was not part of the discussions.
That’s because Springfield Township has not filed a bankruptcy claim for back taxes, according to Prospect’s attorney, Maegan Quajada, of Sidley Austin. A hurdle in any sale is a deed restriction on the Springfield property that requires the operation of an emergency department that is open all the time.
When Prospect announced late last month that it would hold an auction for Springfield and Crozer-Chester, it said any bids had to have no conditions on them, such as the resolution of tax matters or the Springfield deed restriction.
But then Prospect changed its mind and accepted conditional bids and rejected one that was unconditional, an attorney said in court Friday.
Quajada said the unidentified contingencies are being taken care of. “We already know we can meet them,” she said.
Prospect Medical Holdings Inc. said in an emergency bankruptcy motion Friday evening that it wants to “abandon” Delaware County’s Crozer-Chester Medical Center and Springfield Hospital unless local authorities agree to its property tax demands.
The California for-profit, which filed for bankruptcy in January, said it has potential buyers for the properties in Upland Borough and Springfield Township, which were once part of Crozer Health, the county’s largest health system and an important safety-net provider.
However, the bidders won’t close the deals unless tax assessments on the properties are reduced to the amount of the sale prices, Prospect said in its motion. The filing did not say what bids Prospect had received or how much Prospect owes in taxes. The assessments have been in dispute for years.
If U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Stacey Jernigan approves the motion at a hearing scheduled for Friday, Prospect would be allowed to jettison the properties from the case and stop the accumulation of property tax liabilities against the bankruptcy estate.
Then, if the tax authorities still do not agree to Prospect’s demands, the only way the municipalities and school districts could collect at least part of what they are owed would be to foreclose on the properties and put them up for a tax sale — a process that could take years.
Prospect had said previously it planned to hold an auction Oct. 10 for the Crozer-Chester and Springfield properties. It’s not clear if that plan has changed.
Prospect’s replay of earlier tactic that worked
In July, Prospect received court approval to abandon two other shuttered Crozer hospitals, Taylor Hospital in Ridley Park and Delaware County Memorial Hospital in Drexel Hill. Those two hospitals have since been sold.
Upper Darby School District acquired Delaware County Memorial for $600,000 on Aug. 14 and plans to use the property for the expansion of its neighboring high school. A group of local investors bought Taylor for $1 million Sept. 5 and hope to bring medical services back to the building.
In both of those cases, the townships and school districts accepted a general unsecured claim for past property taxes. The assessment issue was moot in Drexel Hill, but in the Taylor sale the taxing authorities agreed to a $1 million assessment for the first year or so.
Complications in Springfield
The Springfield property has a complicated ownership structure. Ventas, a large real estate investment trust, owns three of the buildings, two medical office buildings, and a sports club that is leased to the YMCA of Eastern Delaware County. The sale of those buildings happened in 2009, seven years before Prospect acquired Crozer.
The hospital and a parking garage were part of the 2019 sale of Crozer real estate to a different investment firm, Medical Properties Trust. Under that arrangement, Prospect leased Springfield and other hospitals back from Medical Properties Trust.
After Prospect’s financial condition deteriorated, MPT returned ownership of the Delaware County hospitals to Prospect in exchange for a mortgage. That happened in 2023. During the bankruptcy, MPT agreed to walk away from its interests in Crozer’s real estate.
Prospect failed for years to maintain the hospital and its parking garage, according to a lawsuit filed in mid-September by Springfield Township. The lawsuit cited the potential structural failure of stairwells in the garage and other problems and asked for an order forcing safety improvements.
Judge Jernigan blocked the township from pursuing that lawsuit last week.
Another sticking point in Springfield is a deed restriction requiring the operation of a 24-7 emergency department on the site.
Representatives for Springfield Township and Upland Borough did not respond to requests for comment Saturday.
