Merger Games: The Medical College of Pennsylvania, Hahnemann University, and the Rise and Fall of the Allegheny Healthcare System

With deepening financial problems, Allegheny Health, Education and Research Foundation filed for bankruptcy in 1998oin the midst of its landmark merger of the Medical College of Pennsylvania and Hahnemann University. What resulted was another dire event in an escalating disaster. As civil and criminal investigations probed Allegheny's collapse, the survival of the medical school and other health sciences university schools, and the operation of the hospitals hung in the balance. Fortunately, a saviour arrived in the form of Drexel University which used the opportunity to create its own medical school. Merger Games is Judith Swazey's gripping account of this historic transaction. Based on extraordinarily detailed original research and continuous inside access to the developments, this book clearly delineates who the players were and what the merger means for the future of medical education and institutional healthcare. Merger Games is a definitive history of one of the most important academic medicine mergers in Philadelphia and the country, which happened at a time when medical care was becoming commodified in almost every state.