A decade of change at Reading Hospital

Apr. 19—May 2010: Reading Hospital CEO Scott R. Wolfe steps down. Wolfe was the top administrator of the 662-bed tertiary-care facility in West Reading and of its post-acute rehabilitation center in Spring Township. At the time, the hospital was the largest employer in Berks County, despite layoffs in 2009 of 250 employees. The hospital was already changing with the opening of the Reading Hospital for Post Acute Rehabilitation, Spring Township, and buying out the 50 percent share of its partner at the Highlands at Wyomissing. Wolfe was named chief executive officer in 2007 after 20 years at the hospital, 15 of them in senior management.

2011: A team from FTI Consulting led by Clint Matthews takes over interim leadership of the hospital. According to tax statements, the company was paid about $7.06 million for fiscal 2011.

2012: Reading Hospital rebrands as Reading Health System.

2013: Reading Health System announces the rollout of its $150 million digital records system. The move was a response to a federal push for hospitals to move to electronic health records, which was incentivized with $10 million from the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services if the new system met federal standards. Reading Hospital officials said then that the switch to electronic medical records usually takes five years, but the hospital made the change in 18 months. They called the digital conversion the largest project ever undertaken in the hospital's 145-year history.

September 2013: Reading embarks on an expansion, the largest in the hospital's history. It comes after years of planning. It will increase the hospital campus' space by about 20 percent.

October 2015: Debt rating service Moody's downgrades Reading Hospital bonds to A2. It followed a severe downturn in operating performance in fiscal year 2015 following very weak performance in fiscal year 2014. Officials said its Seventh Avenue building project (which would become the Healthplex), with an estimated cost of $350 million would be funded from operations as planned. The hospital said it was "strategically transforming from a fee-for-service environment to a fee-for-value environment, while consistently improving quality and patient outcomes." Among the investments: information technology platforms for electronic clinical data and accounts receivable; the expansion of Reading Health Partners, a clinically integrated organization of 675 doctors; and Reading Health Physician Network, an integrated multispecialty provider organization with 45 locations in and around Berks County.

November 2015: Fitch downgrade's Reading Hospital's bonds to A+. The bond rater said the hospital's financial weakness is "driven by persistent revenue cycle issues from the conversion to digital records launched in February 2013."

October 2016: Reading Health System opens the lower levels of the 476,000-square-foot Reading HealthPlex. Three months later it begins to occupy the five levels of "state-of-the art, aesthetically-pleasing patient rooms" in the facility. Officials say the expansion had to be done to enable Reading to compete with other regional health systems and keep patients in Berks.

January 2017: Matthews, the CEO, is selected as Reading Eagle's Newsmaker of the Year. Reading Hospital is Berks County's second largest employer. It begins offering UPMC health insurance, the Pittsburgh-based health plan owned by the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. After two fiscal years with negative margins, the health system posted a 1.2 percent operating margin for the 2016 fiscal year that beat projections by $5 million.

August 2017: The Berks County Industrial Development Authority approves an application by the Reading Health System for a tax-exempt revenue bond issue not to exceed $650 million to fund its acquisition of five acute-care hospitals in three contiguous counties.

September 2017: Reading Health System completes acquisition of five regional hospitals owned by beleaguered Community Health Systems, a for-profit system based in Tennessee. The system rebrands as Tower Health. The $423 million deal for the five hospitals would give Tower Health a chance to break into a new market of patients in the Route 422 corridor to King of Prussia.

"It was identified within the strategic planning process that we could stand alone for a period of time," Matthews said then. "But as that period of time progressed, we would see more consolidation around us and we would be the only entity who had not participated."

April 2018: Tower Health announces a partnership with Drexel University to build a medical school in Berks County. The goal is to become an academic center and grew from discussions in 2017 with Drexel about placing third- and fourth-year medical students at Reading Hospital for their clinical training.

September 2018: Reading Hospital upgraded to trauma center status.

January 2019: Tower Health assumes the operations of Home Health Care Management, Berks Visiting Nurse Association, the Visiting Nurse Association of Pottstown and Vicinity, and Advantage Home Care. It launches Tower Health at Home.

February 2020: Tower and Drexel sign a 20-year academic agreement, making Reading Hospital a teaching affiliate of the school. On May 20, third-year Drexel University College of Medicine students began their core clinical rotations at the hospital.

January 2020: More than 100 doctors and medical staff from Drexel Medicine join Tower Health Medical Group, including 52 physicians, 10 advanced practice clinicians and 48 support staff. Tower Health and Drexel University signed a letter of intent to form a combined academic medicine physician practice via Tower Health Medical Group in May 2019.

April 2020: Amid COVID-19 pandemic, Tower Health furloughs 1,000 employees.

May 2020: Tower and Drexel celebrate final beam installation of the new medical school.

June 2020: Tower announces cuts of 1,000 positions.

June 2020: Tower sells 24 properties in a $200 million deal with a Chicago investment firm and leases them from the firm.

July 2020: Nearly three years after plans for a mental health hospital along Route 183 in Bern Township met opposition from a group of residents, the inpatient facility opens for admissions. Tower Behavioral Health is a joint venture between Acadia Healthcare and Tower Health.

July 2020: A new transplant team performs Tower's first transplant.

July 2020: Tower announces intentions to close Reading birth center and Pottstown Hospital maternity ward.

September 2020: Tower posts $246 million losses in three months of the pandemic.

November 2020: Another bond downgrade to junk bond status as losses mount. In a rare public discussion, the board says it is looking for buyers for the system but wants to protect Reading Hospital.

December 2020: Tower Health and Southern Berks EMS announce a merger. With the merger, the nonprofit TowerDIRECT will have 141 employees responding to more than 22,000 calls annually, according to a press release.

February 2021: Tower cuts executive pay. The system says it expects to save $11.6 million by cutting pay of about 400 executives.

February 2021: Tower announces Matthews will step down. He is replaced by P. Sue Perrotty, 67, retired bank executive and community leader, as interim president and CEO of Tower Health. Perrotty has been a member of the Tower board since July 2019.

March 2021: Tower is hit with bond downgrades from Fitch and S&P. It has $1.3 billion in debt. Analysts say the system needs to move quickly to stem losses and that cost savings aren't enough to turn the situation around.