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w-B General hospital

August 14, 2008

WBGH Union to address anxieties

With facility’s future unknown, membership meeting to be held, workers told their rights.

By Jerry Lynott jlynott@timesleader.com
Business Writer
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WILKES-BARRE – Unsure about the future of Wilkes-Barre General Hospital, the union representing nurses there wants its members to be certain of their rights if a widely rumored sale should take place.

The Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals will hold a membership meeting today, said director Bill Cruice.

Cruice said the union scheduled the informational meeting even though there has been no update since the hospital denied a sale was being contemplated when asked by the union several weeks ago.

“There’s clearly something going on,” he said Wednesday.

Cruice believes the hospital, the keystone of the Wyoming Valley Health Care System, will be sold to a larger company. The system employs about 3,200 people, approximately 400 of them registered nurses represented by the union.

“All the indications that I can see in reading between the lines is that it will be a for-profit company,” Cruice said. That would be a radical change for the health care organization that began with the opening of Wilkes-Barre City Hospital in 1876.

While acknowledging that the hospital is looking at alternatives for its future, Dr. William Host, president and chief executive officer of WVHCS, would not go into detail.

“That something is going on is common knowledge,” Host said Monday.

Host has made it known WVHCS is looking for funding to complete a $100 million expansion that is partially finished but now on hold. Negotiations with Blue Cross of Northeastern Pennsylvania over a $40 million contribution ended last fall with the health insurance company and WVHCS going their separate ways.

Since then the health care system’s board has been examining “every conceivable means of capitalizing the future” of the hospital, Host has stated.

Health system officials are in the final stage of making a decision, Host said Monday. But he limited his comments, saying they are working under confidentiality agreements.

Details were few as well when the hospital notified the Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General of a pending change in its operational structure.

When the hospital makes a decision, the attorney general’s office would review it for anti-trust or competitive issues and for how it impacts the hospital’s charitable mission, said Kevin Harley, a spokesman for the attorney general.

The notification occurred within the past few months, Harley said. But at the time the hospital did not say what decisions were made to that point or what course of action it would take, such as a sale or the hiring of a management company.

Hospitals customarily notify the office when considering a merger, affiliation or a change in structure, Harley explained.

Jerry Lynott, a Times Leader staff writer, can be contacted at 570 829-7237.

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