CHA Partners declined to comment on its pending deal with Crozer Health or its standing with Salem Health and Wellness Foundation, which was involved with just the single hospital in Salem and not any of the other four New Jersey hospitals that CHA has acquired and stabilized.
CHA recently signed a letter of intent to purchase the hospital system from Crozer Health’s parent company, Prospect Medical Holdings.
The real estate firm would transition the health system from for-profit to nonprofit status, according to Crozer officials who announced the preliminary, nonbinding deal to staff last week. Prospect will work with CHA over the next few months to complete a transfer of ownership, but until then, there are no guarantees of a completed sale.
Prospect and Crozer officials declined to comment specifically on CHA’s history with the hospital in Salem, New Jersey, and the Salem Health and Wellness Foundation. But in an announcement to staff, Crozer leadership described CHA as a company committed to “preserving health care and jobs in the communities it serves” and turning around hospitals, with “each dedicated to providing exceptional care to local residents.”
Following the recent news of a potential new buyer for the Crozer Health system, Pennsylvania state Sen. Tim Kearney released a statement Thursday with concerns about the potential deal.
“The health and well-being of our constituents in Delaware County must be the top priority,” Kearney said. “I am calling on the Attorney General to conduct a thorough analysis of this acquisition. CHA’s track record must be carefully examined to determine if it is indeed a responsible and suitable buyer that will prioritize the health care needs of our community.”
After their experience in Salem County, DiLorenzo echoed those precautions. And while he blames CHA for failing to pay his foundation back, he said this is all a symptom of widespread challenges facing the United States health care industry.
“Poor communities, poor rural communities in particular, are really struggling to make the equation of all this work,” DiLorenzo said. “You have low insurance reimbursement rates, you don’t have the number of people to create a volume, you have health care systems that you know are trying to make the investment in communities, but they can’t make the numbers work. So, this is something that’s bigger than just Salem or just Delaware County.”
Crozer Health is the region’s main EMS provider and home to its primary trauma center and contains the county’s only burn unit. Last October, parent company Prospect Medical Holdings agreed to a deal with the state Attorney General’s Office and the Foundation for Delaware County to sell the distressed hospital system.
In February, the court-approved plan set in motion a 270-day window for Prospect to locate a nonprofit buyer.
WHYY News first reported last month that Prospect had found a potential buyer, but the identity of CHA Partners was not revealed until this past week. Prospect had also asked Pennsylvania officials for $100 million to $500 million in state funds to help finance the deal.
Aug. 12 (UPI) — Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr., an 87-year-old U.S. House member from New Jersey seeking re-election, is back in a hospital after being treated briefly at a rehabilitation facility.
On Sunday, he went to Cooperman Barnabas Medical Center in Essex County in Livingston, N.J., four days after he was discharged from St. Joseph’s University Medical Center in Paterson, officials said.
Pascrell was hospitalized for 24 days with a fever and needing “breathing assistance,” his staff said. No other details were released on his medical situation.
The Democrat has been a member of Congress since 1997 after he served as Paterson’s mayor in the 1990s and in the New Jersey Assembly for four terms starting in 1988.
If re-elected, he would become the oldest member of Congress. Retiring Rep. Grace Napolitano, D-Calif., is 52 days older, also at 87.
The 2022 election in the 9th District in northern New Jersey was his closest race when he defeated Republican Billy Prempeh, a network engineer, by about 17,000 voters, which was 55% of those cast. Prempeh, who had 43%, is again his opponent in November.
President Joe Biden won the district by 19 percentage points.
Pascrell’s name will remain on the ballot if he doesn’t drop out by Aug. 27. County party leaders would be able to pick a new nominee by Aug. 29.
The current makeup of the U.S. Congress is 220 Republicans and 212 Democrats after Democrats Donald Payne of New Jersey and Sheila Jackson of Texas died this year. Mike Gallagher, a Republican from Wisconsin, resigned in April.
AI deepfakes are on the rise. How can you detect what’s real?
As the use of artificial intelligence escalates, so are scams using “deepfake” technology.
Fox – 5 Atlanta
There are real concerns that deepfake AI will impact the presidential election, and people in New Jersey are among the most concerned.
But what, exactly, is deepfake artificial intelligence? Here’s where the tech stands today, and why there is so much concern surrounding it.
The University of Virginia’s Information and Security Department explains the technology as similar in nature to other image-generating software, but goes much further.
“A deepfake is an artificial image or video (a series of images) generated by a special kind of machine learning called deep’ learning, hence the name,” read the University of Virginia’s deepfake AI explainer. “Deep learning is similar to any kind of machine learning, where an algorithm is fed examples and learns to produce output that resembles the examples it learned from.”
According to the Society for Human Resource Management, one company was bilked out $25 million in a deepfake scam, during which an employee was conned into making a deal through a deepfaked team meeting.
Global professional services group KPMG also warned of deepfake AI’s maliciousness.
“AI is now being used to alter maps, imagery, X-rays, and is used to generate text and even create realistic artwork,” read KPMG’s deepfake AI assessment. “Deepfakes are close to being readily available for a variety of purposes, not all of which are well-intended.”
New Jersey is among the ten states most concerned by the deepfake AI threat, according to findings from AI platform Plus Docs. Plus Docs based its findings off a review of related Google searches.
New Jersey ranked ninth in Plus Docs fundings, and was the only Mid-Atlantic state in the top ten.
“Deepfakes usually make it appear that someone said something they did not,” read an e-mail from Plus Docs, “often to spread a false narrative with nefarious intentions.”
Craig Holman, a Capitol Hill lobbyist who works in governmental ethics for the nonprofit Public Citizen, believes 2024 will become the first deepfake election cycle, where AI will influence voters and impact election results.
“Artificial intelligence has been around for a while, but only in this election cycle have we seen it advance to the point where most people cannot tell the difference between a deepfake and reality,” Holman said. “It’s sort of breathtaking how good the AI has become.”
Deepfaked videos of Vice President and democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris were shared on the social media platform X, according to published reports.
And a separate published report indicated that republican presidential nominee Donald Trump deepfaked a photo of himself among a throng of Black supporters.
Elon Musk, the owner of X, has been urged to rid X of deepfaked political content.
Damon C. Williams is a Philadelphia-based journalist reporting on trending topics across the Mid-Atlantic Region.
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