{"id":322675,"date":"2026-11-06T21:52:08","date_gmt":"2026-11-06T21:52:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/322675\/"},"modified":"2026-11-06T21:52:08","modified_gmt":"2026-11-06T21:52:08","slug":"commonwealth-hospitals-fully-operational-after-owners-other-hospital-loses-license","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/322675\/","title":{"rendered":"Commonwealth hospitals “fully operational” after owner’s other hospital loses license"},"content":{"rendered":"

A western Pennsylvania hospital owned by Tenor Health Foundation \u2014 the nonprofit owner of Commonwealth Health and its hospitals in Scranton and Wilkes-Barre \u2014 suspended services after the state revoked its operating license amid pronounced fiscal challenges.<\/p>\n

But Commonwealth Health said in a statement that it and the Sharon Regional Medical Center, the Mercer County hospital that lost its license, \u201coperate completely independently from one another, and their financials are separate.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCommonwealth Health\u2019s hospitals and physician practices remain fully operational and continue to serve the healthcare needs of Northeastern Pennsylvania,\u201d per the statement.<\/p>\n

Tenor completed its acquisition of Commonwealth early this year in a deal that included Regional Hospital of Scranton, its nearby Moses Taylor Hospital campus in the city and Wilkes-Barre General Hospital in Luzerne County, along with other Commonwealth healthcare assets.<\/p>\n

The completed transaction \u2014 which Commonwealth and its now former parent company, for-profit Community Health Systems Inc., announced in early February \u2014\u00a0was widely celebrated as a lifeline that spared the financially struggling Scranton hospitals in particular from closure.<\/p>\n

It followed Tenor\u2019s earlier acquisition of the troubled Sharon Regional, which the nonprofit reopened last year. The Mercer County hospital had closed in early January 2025, creating a void in the healthcare landscape there, after its former for-profit owner, Steward Health Systems, filed for bankruptcy in 2024.<\/p>\n

Following the recent license revocation and suspension of hospital services, Sharon Regional\u2019s current patient census is zero, according to Gov. Josh Shapiro\u2019s office.<\/p>\n

\u201cTenor Health\u2019s fiscal mismanagement is causing the Sharon community to lose a vital institution, stripping residents of local access to health care and leaving hundreds of hardworking employees without a job,\u201d Shapiro spokesperson Rosie Lapowsky said in a statement. \u201cThe Shapiro Administration has worked for nearly two years directly with Tenor leadership and local officials to keep the doors open at Sharon Regional Medical Center (SRMC), spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in staff overtime for remote and onsite assistance and committing millions of dollars to maintain local health care services. Unfortunately, Tenor leaders have not lived up to their end of the deal, repeatedly choosing to not pay workers on time and allowing debt to skyrocket to unmanageable levels.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lapowsky\u2019s statement notes the state Department of Health issued an order revoking the hospital\u2019s operating license to ensure patient safety, \u201cordering them to stop seeing patients and begin an orderly closure.\u201d<\/p>\n

A notice of service suspension<\/a> posted on the Sharon Regional Health System\u2019s website says the system \u201cwill begin the process of suspending hospital services, as it undertakes a restructuring designed to establish a more sustainable, cost-effective clinical footprint focused on the services most needed by the community.\u201d<\/p>\n

The suspension includes \u201cbroader acute care and outpatient operations,\u201d and emergency department services, per the notice.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf inpatient care is needed, patients will be stabilized and transferred to an appropriate facility for continued treatment,\u201d it says.<\/p>\n

The state Department of Health will assist in those efforts as the hospital transitions into full closure, and Tenor must submit a final closure plan to the department, the governor\u2019s office said.<\/p>\n

Tenor said it invested about $1.2 million in physical plant improvements and about $1.3 million in IT infrastructure since acquiring Sharon Regional to support the hospital and its operations, and approximately $624,000 to support the hospital\u2019s cardiology program. But it also said patient volumes and revenues generated by those services weren\u2019t sufficient to cover the program\u2019s costs.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese investments demonstrate the resources committed to rebuilding Sharon, but restoring a hospital following a closure, particularly without its previous physician and referral network, proved more challenging than anticipated,\u201d Tenor said.<\/p>\n

The Sharon Regional situation is a stark contrast to the optimism Commonwealth and Tenor officials have expressed this year about the future of their hospitals in Lackawanna and Luzerne counties under Tenor\u2019s nonprofit ownership. They did so last month at an event celebrating the grand opening of the Apothecary at Moses Taylor Hospital<\/a>, which restored outpatient pharmacy services there and supports a \u201cmeds-to-beds\u201d program allowing Regional and Moses Taylor patients to receive prescribed medications conveniently prior to discharge.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is really a big deal for us, not just that we\u2019re opening a pharmacy, but we are reopening something that we lost a long time ago,\u201d Regional and Moses Taylor CEO Dr. Patrick Conaboy said at that event. \u201cAnd reopening this is not just something that we are doing for the community, but it\u2019s all about recapturing who we were and what our dedication was like for years to this community and to our patients.\u201d<\/p>\n

Conaboy referred to the pharmacy\u2019s restoration as an example of the broader \u201crebirth\u201d of Regional and Moses Taylor, crediting Tenor with having stepped in \u201cat our darkest moment.\u201d A Commonwealth news release characterized the pharmacy\u2019s opening as \u201cpart of Tenor Health Foundation\u2019s broader commitment to investing in Moses Taylor Hospital and working alongside Commonwealth Health to revitalize the campus, enhance services and make healthcare more convenient and accessible for the communities it serves.\u201d<\/p>\n

Commonwealth said Friday that Sharon Regional will not be borrowing from Commonwealth, and Commonwealth is not providing financial support for Sharon Regional\u2019s operations.<\/p>\n

\"MosesMoses Taylor Hospital in Scranton, an affiliate of Commonwealth Health. (CHAD SEBRING\/STAFF PHOTO)
\n\"Wilkes-BarreWilkes-Barre General Hospital on River Street in Wilkes-Barre.
\n\"MosesMoses Taylor Hospital in Scranton, an affiliate of Commonwealth Health. (CHAD SEBRING\/STAFF PHOTO)
\n\"AnAn ambulance waits in the emergency bay of Regional Hospital of Scranton on Friday, Nov.6, 2026. (CHAD SEBRING\/STAFF PHOTO)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A western Pennsylvania hospital owned by Tenor Health Foundation \u2014 the nonprofit owner of Commonwealth Health and its…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":322676,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[1057,3831,201,182,803,139,28,178,180,179,2685],"class_list":["post-322675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-health","tag-health-care","tag-lackawanna-county","tag-local-news","tag-luzerne-county","tag-news","tag-pennsylvania","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news","tag-wilkes-barre"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322675","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=322675"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322675\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/322676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=322675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=322675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=322675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}