Listen to article \u2022\u00a00:00 min<\/p>\n
Tower Health is eliminating 160 jobs at Pottstown Hospital as part of an effort to bring staffing at the Montgomery County<\/a> facility in line with lower patient volumes, the Berks County nonprofit announced Tuesday. The cuts amount to 22% of the workforce at Pottstown.<\/p>\n In addition to the job reductions \u2014 which are more than the 131 positions cut last year<\/a> at Pottstown \u2014 Tower also plans \u201ca multimillion-dollar investment\u201d to expand the emergency department, enhance inpatient and outpatient behavioral health services, and update portions of the hospital, Tower said. <\/p>\n \u201cThese changes are designed to strengthen the hospital\u2019s ability to serve local residents for generations to come by preserving access to the services patients need most, investing in the areas of greatest community need, and ensuring Pottstown Hospital remains a strong, sustainable community hospital for the future,\u201d Tower said in a statement.<\/p>\n To expand behavioral health, Tower will convert some underused general-purpose hospital beds to inpatient behavioral health beds. The behavioral health total will rise to 52 from 28, an 86% increase. Pottstown has 213 licensed beds.<\/p>\n Tower did not provide a timeline for the changes but said it plans to hire 38 people to staff the expanded emergency department and behavioral health unit, which will have a separate entrance for the sake of patients\u2019 privacy when they seek mental health services.<\/p>\n Another change at Pottstown involves the lease of an unspecified amount of space to Community Health & Dental Care, a federal health clinic that was formed in 2008 with funding from Pottstown Area Health and Wellness Foundation.<\/p>\n Unlike the restructuring Tower announced last fall at Pottstown, which included the closures of the combined intensive care\/critical care unit, the Pottstown location of the McGlinn Cancer Institute, and the hospital\u2019s endoscopy center, this round is not eliminating any services, Tower said.<\/p>\n In the nine months that ended March 31, Pottstown has 5,104 inpatients, down 9.7% from the same period the year before. Most of that decline came in the first three months of this year, after Tower\u2019s service cuts, according to data shared with bondholders.<\/p>\n After last year\u2019s layoffs, which included about 60 registered nurses represented by Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses & Allied Professionals, Pottstown employed about 700 people. Overall, Tower employs more than 10,000. <\/p>\n The union said it still has 200 Pottstown nurses in its ranks. \u201cWe have been in touch with hospital management to better understand the context for and impact of the proposed layoffs and to push hard for solutions that protect both patient care and the dedicated nurses who serve the Pottstown community,\u201d a union spokesperson said.<\/p>\n Tower\u2019s anchor is Reading Hospital in West Reading, Pa. In additional to Pottstown, it owns Phoenixville<\/a> Hospital, plus St. Christopher\u2019s Hospital for Children in North Philadelphia<\/a> in a 50-50 joint venture with Drexel University<\/a>. Tower previously owned Brandywine, Jennersville, and Chestnut Hill<\/a> Hospitals. <\/p>\n It closed Brandywine and Jennersville<\/a> and sold Chestnut Hill to a group led by Temple University<\/a> Health System.<\/p>\n Tower recently announced that Jefferson Health<\/a>, Nemours Children\u2019s Health, and Temple University Health System are working on forming an alliance<\/a> to support St. Chris clinically. Last week, Tower said that it had formed a clinical affiliation<\/a> to expand advanced care in its markets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to article \u2022\u00a00:00 min Tower Health is eliminating 160 jobs at Pottstown Hospital as part of an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":790124,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[97,252,253,335918],"class_list":["post-790123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health-care","tag-health","tag-health-care","tag-healthcare","tag-tower-health-pottstown-hospital-layoffs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/790123","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=790123"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/790123\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/790124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=790123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=790123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=790123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}