Guide to Coney Island privatizing: Cleveland. (Primary Health Systems Inc.'s plan to...

PHS built urban presence, lifted funding; critics question marketability of facilities

Primary Health Systems Inc., the Wayne, Pa.-based hospital management company that hopes to privatize Coney Island Hospital, may just be setting foot in New York City. But for more than two years, it has worked steadily to build a presence in the seven-county Greater Cleveland area that presently includes four hospitals, three of them in urban neighborhoods.

PHS has managed to institute a system of cost controls at the Cleveland hospitals it bought. The acquisitions also improve