Two Philly-Based Health Care Organizations Head to the Suburbs

The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia is now reaching well beyond the city for which it’s named. The Brandywine Valley Specialty Care and Ambulatory Surgery Center brings the Chadds Ford and Springfield practices together into one facility in Glen Mills. It boasts more than 20 medical specialties and subspecialties and has plans to open an urgent care facility in the future.

“We evaluate geographical areas based on the growth of families with young children,” says Amy Lambert, senior vice president of the CHOP Care Network. “The shift today is to provide care in ambulatory settings, and our goal is to provide the right level of care close to children’s homes.”

Meanwhile, a new King of Prussia facility has expanded and upgraded CHOP services that have been on Mall Boulevard since 1997. Four floors and 135,000 square feet, it has 68 exam rooms, sports medicine and developmental PT/OT gyms, pediatric imaging, sleep and urgent care centers, and facilities for pediatric oncology and ambulatory surgery. More than 30 programs and services are available. “We needed a facility with expanded services to best care for patients in that area,” says Lambert. 

CHOP’s new suburban outposts are meant to complement the main hospital in University City, which is also undergoing big changes. 

Dr. Daniel Monti at the new Marcus Integrative Health at the Myrna Brind Center-Villanova, slated to open Nov. 1//Photos by Tessa Marie Images.

“People want face time with physicians, but most primary- care doctors spend their days putting out fires and can’t focus on proactive wellness as much as they’d like. We can,” says Monti.

Jefferson’s Big Main Line Move

Nov. 1 is the projected opening date for Thomas Jefferson University Hospitals’ first medical center in our area. Tentatively called Marcus Integrative Health at the Myrna Brind Center-Villanova, the facility will be located just east of the I-476 interchange on Lancaster Avenue. Its primary backer is Home Depot founder Bernie Marcus, whose Marcus Foundation is the source of a $14 million grant. 

The facility will be a twin to Jefferson’s Myrna Brind Center in Philadelphia. It will offer holistic primary care, acupuncture, micronutrient infusions, and personalized health programs for busy executives. Many of the services are fee-based. “We carved out a niche downtown, and a growing number of people understand it,” says Dr. Daniel Monti, the executive and medical director of both Myrna Brind facilities. “They don’t mind paying for one-on-one time with our physicians.”

Six to eight primary-care providers will work at the Main Line location. “We’ll be more physician-centered than the majority of primary-care practices that now rely on nurse practitioners,” Monti says. “People want face time with physicians, but most primary-care doctors spend their days putting out fires and can’t focus on proactive wellness as much as they’d like. We can.”

Research is another big objective of the center. Jefferson’s specialty in neuroscience will carry over to Villanova’s neurocognitive program to treat patients with head injuries, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and other neurological diseases. “We want to focus on the brain,” says Monti. “We’re going to refine treatment protocols by using the most cutting-edge diagnostic technology in the region.”

The facility’s PET-MRI—also referred to as PET-MR—will be the first of its kind in the Main Line area. “A PET scan is a test with a lot of radiation involved, and that’s of concern to physicians,” says Monti. “We’ll reduce that risk with this hybrid machine, which allows us to do functional MRI with PET to get a picture of the brain very quickly. It’s efficient, and it gets us information that’s difficult to obtain at one time.”