Advocates to reopen the former Crozer-Chester Medical Center, founded in 1958 as Delaware County Hospital, demonstrated outside the shuttered and mostly vacant health care facility Monday, demanding it be reopened as part of National Day of Action for Medicaid Comes to PA – in 12 states across the U.S., according to Put People First! PA.
A few doctors continue to practice and see patients at the Crozer-Chester property.
National Day of Action to Save Medicaid rallies were held Saturday, Sept. 6, too.
Crozer-Chester Medical Center was closed in May 2025 despite public outcry and outrage over the move by for-profit Los Angeles-based Prospect Medical Holdings, Inc. Prospect operates health care facilities in California, Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island. Prospect filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in January, 6 ABC News.com reported.
“I recently had to get breast cancer screening and because of the closure I had to go to Yardley more than an hour away. In addition to being a stressful time, the inability to get local care was unacceptable,” said Heather Schumacher, a Put People First! Southeastern PA Health Care Rights Committee volunteer.
She said the demonstration outside at Crozer aimed to amplify the health care crisis in the region.
“Our emergency room in Springfield closed a few years ago. We’ve lived in Delaware County for 14 years, and it’s incredible to me to see [these] things fall like dominos,” she said.
In addition to Springfield, Taylor Hospital, located in Ridley Park, Delaware County has been shuttered, too, as part of Prospect’s broad health care facility closures.
“This is a nationwide crisis and a pattern that is happening everywhere. This is urgent. People get used to what happens and we don’t want to get used to this – it isn’t Okay,” Schumacher said.
The only remaining hospitals serving the region are Riddle Hospital in Media, operated by Main Line Health and Mercy Fitzgerald in Darby, operated by Trinity Health Mid-Atlantic.
Schumacher said Monday’s event was a “call to action” for local elected officials to actively do more.
While legislators and even representatives for Gov. Josh Shapiro’s office “have been listening,” the time to act is now as state-wide organizations must stop allowing private equity firms to pick up hospital properties and close them, leaving patients and local communities high and dry for care, she said.
“We need the state to use their power, take the hospital back and move it to county control. They (local representatives) are listening but the urgency is lacking, people are dying,” Schumacher said.
In addition to reclaiming local hospitals and reopening those that have been shut down, Schumacher is calling on state offices to “open a health care advocate office to work for the people and advocate on their behalf.”
According to a Put People First! PA press release, the following demands have been made of elected legislators, the governor’s office and other officials:
- For Delaware County to enact eminent domain to seize Crozer-Chester Medical Center from Wall Street.
- For Gov. Shapiro and the attorney general to support counties to reopen closed hospitals as public hospitals.
- For Gov. Shapiro and the attorney general to support a statewide Public Healthcare Advocate, housed in the Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General, that would fight for the rights of everyday people in the healthcare system, not “Wall Street profiteers.”
Crozer has been our emergency room,” Schumacher explained “and with it closed, I don’t know where we would go.”
She said residents lament overcrowding at remaining hospital emergency departments, or EDs.
Crozer-Chester closed on May 2, 2025, leaving 2,700 people without jobs and hundreds of thousands of people without lifesaving emergency and trauma care – the fourth Crozer Hospital to close in the last few years, according to Peggy Malone, former president of the Crozer-Chester Nurses Association.
Hospital closures are an epidemic across the country with 26 hospitals closing in Pennsylvania alone in the past five years – with the passage of further Medicaid cuts, more hospitals will struggle to stay open, said Jamie Blair, of Lansdowne, Delaware County and member of Put People First! PA.
Data USA: Chester PA reported the median household income in the City of Chester, located in Delaware County, is $39,808 with a poverty rate of about 30.8%.
According to the same data service, Data USA, Upland, where Crozer-Chester was located had a median household income in 2023 of $60,200, and a poverty rate of 14.3%.
“The Democratic and Republican parties have let Wall Street and private equity pillage our hospital systems,” Blair said, “while cuts to Medicaid under both Trump and Biden’s administrations are leaving hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvania residents without healthcare. That is why we are taking action to re-open the Crozer system, preserve and expand Medicaid, and guarantee healthcare as a human right for every Pennsylvania resident.”
Recent protest events organized by The Nonviolent Medicaid Army (NVMA) took place in Georgia, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Vermont, the press release said.
According to the Put People First!, those removed from Medicaid will be forced to return to unaffordable, marketplace or employer based plans with high-deductibles and co-pays – or resort to living with no insurance coverage at all. These untenable conditions will further fuel the current medical debt crisis which totals nearly $200 billion in the U.S. today.
Blair, along with seven others, was arrested by police Monday at the Crozer demonstration. The activities leading to the arrest were Livestreamed and may be viewed here.
After months of grassroots neighborhood canvassing and legislative contacts, Blair said the moment for “non violent civil disobedience” had come.
“Seeing that after 130 days Crozer remained shuttered with no laws on the books to prevent this from happening again in Pennsylvania” Put People First! took action.
“It is unjust that these hospitals are being closed and there is not a thing anyone is willing to do about it,” she said.
Blair and others are urging Delaware County to use eminent domain to “take Crozer back and make it a public hospital run by the workers and community.”
Malone said the health care situation in the region “is dire. There has to be somewhere for these patients, and this community, to go and get their health care needs met.”
She said the latest hospital bed count of 450 is grossly inadequate to serve Delaware County’s estimated population of about 600,000.
“To try to get appointments in other systems, some patients are waiting six months to a year for care,” Malone explained.
The Philadelphia Inquirer reported on Sept. 5, private investors from KQT Aikens Partners (Keystone Quality Transport) an ambulance company in the area, had purchased Taylor Hospital for $1 million.
Malone noted people with chronic conditions like diabetes, hypertension, COPD and mental health medications won’t be able to get the prescriptions filled if they are not able to access physicians.
“If they are waiting … they are putting their lives at risk,” she said.
