PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Tower Health is laying off 150 employees and closing Pottstown Hospital’s ICU, cancer units, and other smaller departments, in a move that has drawn the ire of local politicians.
The Pottstown workers represent a large portion of a 350-person layoff across the Tower Health network announced last week.
State Sen. Tracy Pennycuick says she and Rep. Joe Ciresi have been having discussions with the Berks County-based health network about the future of Pottstown Hospital for months, and she felt blindsided by the announcement.
“They renegotiated their contract with the nurses in June, so that kind of gave us some hope,” said Pennycuick. “Then the reports came out that overall,Tower Health was in the black. So we kind of took it as, ‘hey, things are looking up.’”
The layoffs are just the latest cuts to Pottstown Hospital after Tower closed the maternity department in 2020. Pennycuick said she’s concerned that community members might need to travel to the next-closest hospitals in Phoenixville or Reading, both Tower-owned facilities 20 to 30 minutes away.
“I don’t want to see a health care desert in Pottstown,” she said. “The reality is they have an obligation to Pottstown, and I’d like to see them fulfill that promise.”
She also wants Tower to commit to prioritizing the laid off employees for other positions in the company.
Tower Health says the cuts are designed to reduce their annual losses, which run about $40 million, by half.
They say the savings will allow them to “strategically reinvest” in what the company calls “the pillars that power our future.”