(L-R) Riddle Hospital president Gary Perecko; JoAnn Magnatta, MLHS senior vice president, facilities design and construction/real estate; Lydia Hammer, MLHS senior vice president, marketing and business development; Jack Lynch, MLHS CEO and president.
Main Line Health System’s president and CEO Jack Lynch made no bones about it. MLHS’ new 131,500 square foot, $47 million center, which opened on Dec. 14, brings “good healthcare and disease prevention” to thousands of Delaware County residents. Glen Mills is now chock-a-block with physicians from CHOP, the Rothman Institute and Crozer-Keystone Health Services, which has an extensive medical complex within walking distance of MLHS’s new center.
Why open a medical center in an already crowded market? “We do need assessments to evaluate the medical services available to people in various regions and determined that Glen Mills was a good match for what Main Line Health offers,” Lynch said. That includes urgent care, primary care, an extensive imaging center, physical therapy, occupational health, Nemours duPont Pediatrics and Bryn Mawr Rehabilitation Hospital.
The Glen Mills complex also houses MLHS’s first fitness and wellness center. The 50,000 square foot facility is helmed by a medical advisory board of over 30 physicians in a variety of specialties who worked with fitness experts to create regimens for people with heart disease, neurological issues and other ailments. “[It’s] a wonderful idea, completely in line with Main Line Health’s mission, that we finally found the right location for,” Lynch said.
Eleven years ago Fitness and Wellness Professional Services approached Lynch about duplicating its joint ventures with the University Medical Center at Princeton, Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital among others. Leslie Adelman Banks, managing partner at Fitness and Wellness, explained that, as the name suggests, these centers are a fusion of fitness and wellness. “It’s medically-based exercise,” she said at the MLHS opening event. “We want to help people do precise exercises that will lead to their long-term health and wellness.”
Glen Mills residents seem enthusiastic, said Lynch, echoing sentiments expressed last summer by Lydia Hammer, Main Line Health’s senior vice president of marketing and business development. The wellness center represents a new model for Main Line Health, she added. “Main Line Health is in the health business, not just in the hospital business,” Hammer said.
One thing noticeably absent from MLHS’s Glen Mills center: an ambulatory surgical center, considered by many health care experts to be the wave of the future because they are medically efficient and economical. Crozer and CHOP have regional networks of ASCs and the Rothman Institute has plans to double its investment, as well. “We have full surgical facilities at Riddle Hospital,” Lynch said, “and we will continue to monitor this region’s needs over time.”
Time is something that MLHS certainly invested in Glen Mills. Stephen Aichele, chairman of MLHS’s board of trustees, said that, while the center opened on time and budget, getting approval for its construction took nine years. Aichele thanked the cadre of local and state officials who gathered to celebrate the opening. “This facility is a testament to what happens when government gets it right … because they didn’t harass us,” Aichele said with a laugh. On a more serious note, he said, “If people take charge of their own health, everyone benefits.”
