{"id":299047,"date":"2025-11-18T12:11:12","date_gmt":"2025-11-18T12:11:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/299047\/"},"modified":"2025-11-18T12:11:12","modified_gmt":"2025-11-18T12:11:12","slug":"pottstown-hospital-nurses-decry-layoffs-and-service-closures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/299047\/","title":{"rendered":"Pottstown Hospital nurses decry layoffs and service closures"},"content":{"rendered":"

From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to cover? Let us know!<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

Pottstown Hospital nurses and other staff gathered to protest widespread layoffs on Monday morning. They lambasted health system owners for shutting down what they call critical services to the community and cutting jobs.\n<\/p>\n

Parent company Tower Health, which also operates acute care hospitals in Reading and Phoenixville, announced earlier this month it will lay off 350 people across the system<\/a>, citing \u201cmajor headwinds confronting every health system nationwide.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

More than one-third of those layoffs \u2014 131 positions \u2014 are occurring at Pottstown Hospital, which will close its intensive care unit, cancer infusion center, outpatient endoscopy suite and the second floor medical-surgical nursing unit by Jan. 16.\n <\/p>\n

Staff received notices on Nov. 7 about eliminated positions.\n<\/p>\n

Union members of Pottstown Nurses United, an affiliate of the Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals, said they were \u201cblindsided\u201d by the closures. They warned that patients will soon have to travel much farther to get certain health care services.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cThat building has seen births, deaths, recoveries, heartbreaks and miracles,\u201d said Beth Ridgley, an ICU registered nurse. \u201cAnd for many in this community, it\u2019s more than bricks and beds. It\u2019s a lifeline, one that\u2019s now being severed, not because it failed, but because it stopped being profitable enough.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

Job losses and concerns over access to health services<\/p>\n

Registered nurse Maria Gutierrez, who works in Pottstown Hospital\u2019s cancer center, said her colleagues were crucial in helping her recover from breast cancer in 2020, especially as she continued to work throughout treatment.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause that\u2019s the Pottstown Hospital way. We care for each other,\u201d Gutierrez said through sobs. \u201cToday, we are asking the community for support not only in saving our jobs, but in saving critical and necessary health care resources in Pottstown.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

Christie Daub has loved being an ICU patient care technician, she said. But the Pottstown native said she\u2019s now grieving for the loss of patient services, her job and her \u201ccore sense of purpose.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

Facing unemployment and a loss of income, Daub said she\u2019s in danger of losing the new home she and her son just moved into a few weeks ago.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a single mother, with the rising costs of living, I am terrified about how I\u2019m going to care for my son,\u201d she said. \u201cChristmas is coming. It feels like we\u2019re slowly drowning.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

Daub said she fears that the changes at the hospital will have long-term health effects on the community, which includes a growing aging population and a significant number of unhoused residents.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s infuriating that Tower is condemning our whole community to a future where there\u2019s more sickness, more death, more dead-end jobs and poverty,\u201d she said.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":299048,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[97,252,253,1493,155770,2539,25811,147884],"class_list":{"0":"post-299047","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health-care","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-health-care","10":"tag-healthcare","11":"tag-hospital","12":"tag-hospital-closures","13":"tag-layoffs","14":"tag-montgomery-county","15":"tag-pottstown"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299047","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=299047"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299047\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/299048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=299047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=299047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=299047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}