Merger Games

With deepening financial problems, Allegheny Health, Education and Research Foundation filed for bankruptcy in 1998--in 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 Gamesis 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 Gamesis 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.