Cooper University Health Care is poised to expand its footprint in Camden, New Jersey after scoring a $39.9 million tax deal from the state.
The New Jersey Economic Development Authority awarded the incentives to support Cooper in locating administrative and support offices in Camden.
Cooper, home of a 540-bed teaching hospital and medical complex in Camden and numerous clinics throughout the South Jersey region, applied for the tax credits under the new Grow NJ Assistance Program.
The health system has offices with about 350 staffers currently located in Cherry Hill and Mount Laurel, and was considering consolidating and relocating in Philadelphia. The tax credits will be available over 10 years and Cooper would retain those 350 jobs and create about 20 new ones.
After more than a century as one the region’s largest providers, Cooper has been working on high-profile economic and health transformation in Camden for more than a decade, including engagement and prevention initiatives for “frequent fliers,” the most at-risk patients.
[See also: Cooper to obtain stake in AmeriHealth NJ.]
In 2008, Cooper opened a $220 million patient pavillion, with new operating space, private patient rooms, 30 ICU beds, a public lobby space and a community healing garden.
In 2012, the health system opened New Jersey’s first new medical school in 30 years, with Rowan University. Last year, it opened a new cancer treatment facility, the MD Anderson Cancer Center at Cooper, in a partnership with the renowned Texas oncology giant to leverage best practices, emerging treatments and an established brand.
Cooper is also a 20 percent owner in AmeriHealth New Jersey, a part of Independence Blue Cross subsidiary AmeriHealth, and is expanding a Cooper-centric health plan across greater Camden in the shore areas around Cape May.
As part of the Camden Coalition of Healthcare Providers, Cooper has also been using a data analysis and community-based primary care strategies to address such issues as non-emergent use of hospital EDs.
There is “a need for really significant clinical redesigns so we are going to have to fundamentally rethink all the basic pieces of how people move through the delivery system and how the delivery system works,” as Jeffrey Brenner, MD, executive director of Cooper’s Urban Health Institute, told Healthcare Finance News in a past interview.