Let me start at the beginning.
Because of Penn Medicine’s irresponsible mandate that violates a primary principle of medical ethics—that no one should be coerced to receive a medical procedure—Lancaster General Hospital is bleeding employees. Let me help my fellow Lancaster County residents visualize how much worse it’s going to get if our community doesn’t speak up and convince them to back off this foolish malarky. You need to make noise to get them to listen.
I’ll start.
Hey Penn Medicine leadership: your mandate is going to destroy the hometown hospital we’ve relied on for generations.
Courtesy of the nonprofit Wayback Machine, here’s a comparison of open positions in a few categories at LG Health, plus the total, showing 13 weeks before their mandate (February 2021) and 13 weeks after the mandate (today).
Overall, the organization had 423 positions listed in June. And now they have 785.
That’s 85% more openings.
Employees are stampeding to get out of this place.
By percentage:
Will it be a nurse or an “open position” you need when your father hits the call button on 8 West?
Will it be a tech or an “open position” you need to start CPR when your brother codes in the ED?
Will it be a physician or an “open position” you need to read your daughter’s chest X-ray?
Do Linked In ads answer phones? Do sign-on bonuses deliver meals? Will that classified listing clean the floor, change the sheets, fix the elevator, or fill your prescription?
Almost 30,000 Lancastrians read my last post, and almost 7,000 interacted with it on Facebook. I got so many, many kind words, but… it was also made *somewhat* clear you’re not all fans of what you think I’m saying.
So let me say it again, louder for the people in the back:
“I am not arguing for or against any medical procedure. I am not “refusing” anything, nor am I keeping anyone else from having something they want or need. But whether or not I agree, or you agree, that healthcare workers should have bodily autonomy isn’t the issue. The bottom line is that there are hundreds of LGH employees who have already left over this mandate, and hundreds more are due up to be fired in three weeks. And THAT matters to all the corporeal beings of Lancaster County. ”
If you live in Lancaster, you need to be scared. You need to shame these foolish leaders who are choosing politics over patient care.
The job postings sting as pathetic; they’re begging so hard to get people to work in this place. And yet, there are ever-growing hundreds of qualified, trained, experienced professionals who want to continue serving patients, but they’re being fired, pressured, coerced, bullied, manipulated, and laughed out the door.
Lancaster, let your healthcare heroes keep working the jobs they love.
This is a life-sapping ‘your kind of help not wanted’ catastrophe.
Your hospital is hemorrhaging employees, and it’s getting worse.
To the Board of Trustees: your employees are people, not pawns. Stop the bleeding!
Lancaster’s dedicated veterans who have had their exemption requests refused with the most offensive of language are still sticking it out. You have a chance to help them. These people aren’t organizing walk-outs. They aren’t leaving when your mom’s colostomy bag ruptures. They are still holding your sister’s hand when she hears the cancer diagnosis. They are answering their pager at 3:14 am.
You see, unlike the ivory-tower leadership who hides behind Zoom screens and smartphones, the women and men on the front lines have dry hands, tired backs, mask rashes, and headaches from their safety goggles.
These healthcare heroes love their patients, and they’re going to be there—taking blood pressures, transporting patients, making meals, and changing lightbulbs—until security escorts them out in three weeks. That’s when we’ll see if LGH’s leadership’s choice is really to have empty hallways and unattended call-bells… if they’re really willing to destroy the generations-long legacy of this hospital.
If your neighbors don’t speak up and get LGH’s embarrassingly silent leaders to refuse this Penn Medicine policy, it’s you and your family that are going to suffer. When you need a thriving hospital, you will instead pull up to a half-empty, half-hearted shell of what LGH once was.
Lancaster, let Penn Medicine know that our community deserves better.
If you want to donate to the legal defense fund for the healthcare heroes who are standing up to this mandate, you can do that here.
P.S. Someone *realskies* politely told me the bonuses I mentioned last time were not real, so here are some handy-dandy links so you can check yourself:
All sign on bonuses (53 at publish date)
$10,000 sign on bonus (1 at publish date)
$5,000 sign on bonus (18 at publish date)
$4,000 sign on bonus (7 at publish date)
LG Leaders Contact Info
Alex Jorgensen, Chief of Human Resources
alexandra.jorgensen@pennmedicine.upenn.edu | 717-544-1210
John Lines, PR Director
john.lines@pennmedicine.upenn.edu | 717-544-5054
Mike Ripchinski, Chief Clinical Officer
michael.ripchinski@pennmedicine.upenn.edu | 717-544-5817
Stacey Youcis, Chief of Hospital Operations
stacey.youcis@pennmedicine.upenn.edu | 717-544-5007
