2 min read February 2022 — Temple University Health System is a world-renowned academic health system based in Philadelphia with 1,550+ physicians and scientists. In an interview with Invest:, CEO Michael Young discussed where Temple Health stands today, as well as various market dynamics unfolding at this time.
What makes Philadelphia attractive from a healthcare standpoint?
So much of this market is driven by healthcare, pharma and research. This is the focus of our city. Just as Florence is known for leather and the best shoes and handbags, Philadelphia is known for healthcare. You wouldn’t want to come here and start a dairy, but you might want to come here and start a pharmacy, a healthcare IT business or a clinical activity of some sort. We recruit the best healthcare talent and professionals here to Philadelphia.
Where does Temple Health stand today?
Over the last couple of years, we moved from a state of stabilization to a growth mode. We’ve had a very strong financial performance and have been upgraded by all three ratings agencies, reducing our cost of debt moving forward. We are spiraling up, starting with our great clinical outcomes, which then produces a financial platform to further improve our future clinical operations.
The most important piece is the clinical delivery of care. Our COVID outcomes are better than state and national averages and even considered remarkable. People recognize that Temple is at the top of the heap in clinical outcomes, with our transfer list encompassing individuals from as far West as York and as far north as Cornell.
What does the future hold for Fox Chase?
Fox Chase Cancer Center is a great institution but it was kind of just cruising along. Now we’re pushing the throttles and it’s going to be growing dramatically over the coming years. This is an exciting opportunity for all of Philadelphia.
Fox Chase is an amazing resource that has perhaps been underestimated by the community in the past. It’s exciting to watch what they’re doing and the new faculty they’re recruiting from Top 5 institutions.
How does demand for your services today compare to pre-pandemic levels?
We have about 100 different service lines. Across any two-month period, all 100 service lines are above pre-pandemic levels.
In what ways is Temple Health innovating?
We’re the nation’s largest lung transplant center by transplant volume and we have the best survival outcomes and shortest transplant waitlist times of any other program in our region. We are developing implants to make lungs work better, working with industry to market them. Organizations from all over the world such as John Hopkins and Mayo Clinic come to Temple to see what we’re doing. The same is happening in pulmonary hypertension, bone marrow transplants and our high-end cancer programs at Fox Chase where we have 150 clinical trials underway. In the surgical realm, we’ve redone every OR with all new towers, lights and instrumentation over the last 18 months, as well as integrating 6 more robots for surgeries.
We are converting three ORs into one of the world’s best bronchoscopy suites, taking this new science to the next level by providing the space and resources necessary. It’s very unusual for bronchoscopy to be in the main OR, but because of many unique things at Temple we can do that.
We’re the nation’s largest lung transplant center by transplant volume and we have the best survival outcomes and shortest transplant waitlist times of any other program in our region.
How significant is the nursing shortage at this time?
We’re doing better than most, but we’re still doing badly. We lost 300 nurses and recruited 300 nurses, but we still have 100 agency nurses that we’d like to replace with full-time Temple employees. I believe the shortage will continue to get worse over the coming three to four years until it gets better. But of course, we have a nursing school at Temple so we’re doing better than some of our peers. We’re working with them to expand class size and reduce the time to achieve criteria.
This will be the big challenge moving forward and it will prove terminal for some organizations. Those who aren’t having strong financial success will not be able to afford to compete. We will see attrition. Hopefully, as some of those institutions shut down more human capital will reenter the marketplace.
What is your outlook for Philadelphia’s healthcare ecosystem?It’s positive, but the challenge will be competing on a national scale for human capital. Instead of screaming ahead, we’re going to be moving quickly, simply due to not having enough uniquely skilled people to help with clinical service. There are too many external challenges at this time to hit a grand slam.
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