Graduate Hospital

Graduate Hospital has plucked its new chief executive and president from within the ranks of its intended corporate parent - Allegheny Health, Education and Research Foundation. Hospital officials said yesterday that they had selected Arnold T. Berman, who has been department chairman for orthopedic surgery and rehabilitation for Allegheny University Hospital, Hahnemann Division. He will assume his new job on Nov. 1. Berman replaces Samuel Steinberg, who was dismissed last month as part of a reorganization.

In an effort to shore up its balance sheet so it can attract new capital for expansion, Graduate Hospital has agreed to sell three medical office buildings and a parking facility to a real estate investment group formed by one of its longtime directors, SEC records and interviews show. The deal would bring the hospital $30 million and net it about $15 million after paying off mortgages and other costs. Graduate would then lease back the facilities for about $3.5 million a year, about what it is paying now in carrying costs on the sites, said Harold Cramer, chairman and chief executive of Graduate Health System, the nonprofit parent of Graduate Hospital.

15-month-old Courtney Enders, a lady bug, appears ready to fly away home as volunteer Eleanore De Vadetsky gives her a Halloween treat at Graduate Hospital yesterday.

Henry J. Tumen, 92, of Center City, an internationally renowned specialist in digestive disorders, an esteemed clinician and an educator at Graduate Hospital for more than 65 years, died Friday at the Unitarian Universalist House in Germantown. Dr. Tumen was a pioneer in developing gastroenterology as a medical specialty and served as chairman of the American Board of Internal Medicine's Gastroenterology Board from 1958 to 1960. He published 134 articles and book chapters and was a consulting gastroenterologist for many years at the Albert Einstein Medical Center and the Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

Graduate Hospital in Center City and Zurbrugg Memorial Hospitals in Willingboro and Riverside, N.J., have agreed to merge, forming a 770-bed hospital network with one foot on each side of the Delaware. The linkage will give Zurbrugg Hospitals a tie to the highly-specialized treatment available at Graduate, and help Graduate provide comprehensive care to New Jersey patients who are in HMOs and other insurance plans that have contracts with Graduate. Also, Zurbrugg has departments in pediatrics and obstetrics, which Graduate Hospital lacks.

Graduate Hospital and Zurbrugg Memorial Hospitals in Willingboro and Riverside, N.J., have agreed to merge, forming a hospital network with one foot on each side of the Delaware River. The Graduate Hospital is a 320-bed specialty care hospital in Philadelphia. Zurbrugg's 138-bed Riverside division and 318-bed Rancocas Valley division in Willingboro are community hospitals with a combined total of 456 beds, serving Burlington County, N.J. The merger is contingent on legal and regulatory approvals.

"One of my dreams was always to be a doctor," Abram Bakker Jr. said his wife revealed to him one day in the 1990s. She was almost 20 years out of college when, he said, she told him, "I really would like to give it a shot. " She did it well enough that in 2003 and 2004, he said, attending physicians at Graduate Hospital in Philadelphia gave her their Guth Award for a resident physician "who displays compassion for the sick, a true sense of humanity, and a meticulous regard for human dignity.

Samuel M. Levit, 81, of Center City, a longtime internist and cardiologist, died Wednesday at the Unitarian Universalist House in Germantown. Dr. Levit had a private practice in Center City for 40 years, taught medicine and was on the staff at Graduate Hospital before retiring in 1986. He was well-known as a physician's physician and a caring doctor who became a role model for younger physicians. "He exemplified what a good doctor should be - vast knowledge and concern.

Paul Nemir Jr., 78, who spent more than 50 years at Graduate Hospital in Center City as a surgeon, professor and researcher, died of heart failure Sunday at the Quadrangle in Haverford. He formerly lived in Upper Providence Township, Delaware County. Dr. Nemir, who specialized in thoracic, vascular and gastrointestinal surgery, was surgeon-in-chief and chairman of surgery at Graduate from 1973 until 1986, when he became emeritus professor. But he continued to work. He was intern chairman in 1989, performed surgeries until 1993, and was doing historical research for the hospital until three weeks ago. In recent years, he had a series of health problems.

Dr. Philip Kimbel, 65, of Merion, an international expert on pulmonary diseases who was chairman of the department of medicine at Graduate Hospital, died Saturday at the hospital. With his silver hair and dignified manner, Dr. Kimbel looked the part of the quintessential physician, which colleagues said he was. When he walked into a restaurant, waiters who had never met him before often asked, "Do you have a reservation, doctor?," family members recalled. Dr. Kimbel, a native of Philadelphia, lectured on pulmonary diseases throughout the United States and in Canada, Japan and Thailand.

Dr. Lloyd W. Stevens, 97, of Bryn Mawr, a retired surgeon and professor of surgery, died of cancer Sunday, Sept. 25, at Lankenau Hospital. From 1959 to 1979, Dr. Stevens was director of surgery at Presbyterian Medical Center, and from 1939 to 1979, he was on the medical faculty at the University of Pennsylvania, from which he retired as a professor of clinical surgery. Dr. Stevens pioneered many surgical techniques and was the author of 35 papers in various journals of medicine and surgery as well as a contributing author to numerous chapters in medical textbooks.

Manly Y. Brunt Jr., 83, of Wayne, a former psychiatrist at two hospitals in the Philadelphia region, died of complications from lymphoma Wednesday, Aug. 4, at Bryn Mawr Hospital. He joined the staff of Bryn Mawr in 1964, according to a son, Kenneth. He was director of the department of psychiatry from 1975 to 1986 and president of the medical staff from 1983 to 1985. Born in Winston-Salem, N.C., Dr. Brunt attended Wake Forest University, but in his sophomore year enlisted in the Navy.

Having toiled in the beer-soaked land of the jukebox for most of his career, it's perhaps only natural that Brendan Hartranft sees the budding gastropub empire he's built with his wife, Leigh Maida, in terms of Elvis Costello records. "Accessible but with an edge," he says of his Costello-esque approach to crafting, in the short span of less than two years, a trio of taverns in up-and-coming neighborhoods around the city. If Kensington's Memphis Taproom was their My Aim Is True debut, a straight-from-the-heart corner-bar hit that toed the delicate style line between beer-geek cool and easy local consumption, Hartranft calls their less-polished second endeavor, Local 44 in West Philly, his version of Costello's harder-edged This Year's Model.

"One of my dreams was always to be a doctor," Abram Bakker Jr. said his wife revealed to him one day in the 1990s. She was almost 20 years out of college when, he said, she told him, "I really would like to give it a shot. " She did it well enough that in 2003 and 2004, he said, attending physicians at Graduate Hospital in Philadelphia gave her their Guth Award for a resident physician "who displays compassion for the sick, a true sense of humanity, and a meticulous regard for human dignity.

Paul E. Epstein, 68, of Gladwyne, a retired physician who was an expert on lung diseases, died of pancreatic cancer Thursday at Penn Medicine at Rittenhouse in Philadelphia. Dr. Epstein was a clinical professor at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School and in 1973 was founding director of Penn's Cardiovascular Pulmonary Training Program. He was chief of the pulmonary division at Graduate Hospital for 17 years until 1999, and then for eight years he was chief of pulmonary medicine at Penn Medicine in Radnor.

The former Graduate Hospital in Philadelphia will officially reopen today with a new medical mission and a more upscale name. Penn Medicine at Rittenhouse - the campus is at 18th and Lombard Streets, about half a mile south of tony Rittenhouse Square - houses a 38-bed, long-term acute-care hospital, a 58-bed inpatient rehabilitation facility, a hospice unit, an ambulatory-surgery center, a pain-management center, and a radiology suite. The facility, formerly owned by Tenet Healthcare, underwent $70 million in renovations.

The University of Pennsylvania Health System announced yesterday that it would buy Graduate Hospital and convert it into a rehabilitation and long-term acute-care facility. Penn officials said the deal would free about 40 acute-care beds at its other hospitals and expand research and training programs in rehabilitation medicine. "This will expand our ability to offer the finest rehabilitative care to a greater number of patients," said Ralph W. Muller, chief executive officer of the Penn system.

Susan J. Gordon, 62, of Haddonfield, chief of gastroenterology at Graduate Hospital and a professor at Drexel University College of Medicine, died of lymphoma Saturday at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Gordon was diagnosed with an aggressive form of lymphoma four years ago and treated patients until the morning she went into the hospital last month. She approached her illness with a kind of "suck-it-up" determination, said her husband, Leif Hovstadius.

Edward C. Rosenow Jr., 92, former executive director of the American College of Physicians in Philadelphia and a clinical professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, died Monday at the Mother Hull Home in Kearney, Neb. Before moving to Nebraska last year, Dr. Rosenow lived at the Quadrangle, a retirement community in Haverford, for more than 10 years. He had previously been a longtime resident of Center City. His daughter, Susan Vig, said that as a physician and an administrator her father "was committed to continuing medical education.

During the Blizzard of 1996, Neil Donohue, podiatric surgeon, found his calling. He met Sister Bernadette Kinnery and agreed to join a volunteer medical team on a two-week mission to Peru. What he saw in rural South America persuaded him to start World Walk Foundation, an international nonprofit devoted to helping the victims and the healers of lower-extremity diseases and birth defects. "I'm doing things now for the reasons I became a doctor - to help people," said Donohue, 49. "Even in medical school, I read about leprosy and wanted to help.