The shiny new hospital has opened up in a neighboring town and is in the process of closing Montgomery Hospital built in 1933 in Norristown. An article appeared today about the rememberances of the employees. For decades Montgomery Hospital took care of the sick and injured, delivered babies, and pronounced the dead, and now it is closing. For me, even as a relative newcomer to Norristown, I am sick that this is happening.
The new Einstein Hospital built on Germantown Pike in East Norriton is a LEED certified building with state of the art medical technology; something they say would not be able to be done at the old building. The new hospital is attracting some of the best talent in the medical field to treat patients so the area has the potential of being a leading star in the industry and offer our residents, as well as people from outside the area, new treatments and possibly save more lives. Of all the bragging they did with how "green" their building is, the real “green” technology would have been to recyle the old building.
While it's great to the best and brightest of everything, it’s not the need for new machinery and cutting edge techniques that caused the new operators of Montgomery Hospital to build anew. It was the people. Yes, they now have a new facility – and everyone loves new stuff – and it is their silent hope that the people they were used to treating at the Norristown place won’t go to their new one. While they claim that is not the case, I strongly suspect differently. During the discussions about the eventual closing of the hospital I attended many meetings where they presented data showing who they treated and the reason they were losing money because of it. By presenting the data they did, they were slowly building the case for the move. So now it is a totally done deal and Norristown will be left with a large unwanted building. It will now be up to Norristown officials to deal with. It is my hope that since they knew of this closing for several years they are prepared to act on it swiftly.
I could not agree more. The new hospital was one of many reasons I decided to move. The added traffic and the loss of open space caused by the new building made East Norriton less attractive. Since Suburban Hospital had recently expanded less than two miles away, I did nor see the need for a new hospital. The old hospital was strategically located to serve the bulk of the population. You will need to fight the worse traffic in the area to reach the new one.
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