Yesterday, the Lancaster Newspapers’ propaganda machine reports that LGH’s vaccine mandate has ‘worked.’ They are celebrating that—by removing the basic right to medical freedom and bodily autonomy from their staff—they have raised the vaccination rate from 66% to 98%! Yay for tyranny! But even though the headline is a lie (we call it clickbait now to call a lie a nicer word), even the article admits all they’ve done is given out hundreds of medical and religious waivers just to keep the doors open. Their mandate may have increased under-duress, violation-of-medical-ethics vaccinations – but the true results of the mandate are increased (1) quitting and (2) exemptions to vaccine mandates. It has also (1) decreased morale and (2) decreased their ability to deliver quality patient care.
LGH decimated their staff volume massively to get to this high-pitched, headline-screeching 97.5% rate. And, the devastating exodus continues. Here’s the graph I showed you at the beginning of August with an update added. It’s so much worse than I would have even feared. Do you see that the first jump shows a time change of 26 weeks (half a year) and the second jump is over less than three weeks? You and your sick child are going to walk into the doors of LGH when you need help and find a ghost town.
Do you see all the open jobs? LGH’s new mafia enforcer CEO and his gangster hitmen have been running all the undesirables out of the hospital. They are ridding LGH of those losers we don’t want: the three-decades-experienced pediatric nurses, the four-decades-of-service-heart-of-gold dining services staffer, the 15-year veteran of non-invasive cardiology, and the beloved gerontology nurse practitioner – you know, all the gross ‘non-compliant’ people who don’t want to show their papers to come to work. All the nut jobs, the conspiracy theorists who have read… um… any history book, ever, and see that we should all know it’s a bad plan to allow someone to control your freedom over your own body.
Read the article for the quote from the expert who says, “This is not the way to raise vaccination rates,” then goes on to add that “a staffing shortage exacerbated by the pandemic means the loss of a single employee could be disastrous.” And yet, we are supposed to celebrate that this is precisely what they are doing at the hospital you’ll need if your daughter wrecks her bike, if your mom finds a lump in her breast, or your pastor starts experiencing chest pain.
This mandate of Penn’s that LGH is blindly swallowing is making Lancaster a more dangerous place to live, to work, to raise a family. The patient care level at our hospital is suffering because of their politics. The mandatory-leave papers were distributed last week in advance of the mass firings. How many nurses, how many wound care specialists, how many behavioral health counselors, how many technologists, how many phlebotomists have their last day of service on Tuesday? How many more will leave as the stampede continues?
And the big question: how long will you let this go on before you tell LGH to grow a backbone and stand up for our healthcare workers?
Here’s what you need to do.
Bang on the bully-in-chief’s door and tell him his New Orleans mafia tactics are not welcome here. Tell him we know that Penn Medicine brought him in as a big-city enforcer to get backwoods little Lancaster to crumble. But we are standing, in his line of fire, together anyway.
Don’t let LGH’s upper management and board continue to be spineless. Jan Bergen, LGH’s former CEO, worked in the ranks here and used to come to staff huddles. Now, their ivory tower leadership hides and ducks any staff contact, cancelling meetings and refusing phone calls.
If you’re reading this, you went to school with someone in leadership at LGH. You’re friends on Facebook. You golf with somebody on the LGH board. You go to church with their Director of XYZ. Your son plays on the same soccer team as the daughter of their Manager of something-of-other. TELL THEM WHAT YOU THINK. SPEAK UP. REMIND THEM THAT THEY ARE IN THIS POSITION TO KEEP OUR COMMUNITY SAFE, AND A SAFE COMMUNITY HAS A WELL-STAFFED HOSPITAL NOT A SKELETON CREW THAT CAN BARELY KEEP THE LIGHTS ON.
Demand Lancaster Newspapers actually do their job as journalists.
If you’re a local, you are going to wind up at LGH or another Penn facility at some point – whether you have COVID, a car accident, cancer, or a baby to deliver – and you’re going to pay the price for not speaking up. This mandate is destroying our hospital, and your silence is letting them destroy Lancaster’s healthcare quality a piece at a time.
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
Note: You’ll see above, I’m saying may have increased vaccination rates, because they haven’t actually told us if there’s been a vaccination rate change. They’ve reported there’s a change in the rate of ‘compliance,’ a number they admit includes all those who been granted exemptions and remain unvaccinated.
