Tower Health is laying off 160 workers at Pottstown Hospital while expanding emergency department, behavioral health

Tower Health is eliminating 160 jobs at Pottstown Hospital as part of an effort to bring staffing at the Montgomery County facility in line with lower patient volumes, the Berks County nonprofit announced Tuesday. The cuts amount to 22% of the workforce at Pottstown.

In addition to the job reductions — which are more than the 131 positions cut last year at Pottstown — Tower also plans “a multimillion-dollar investment” to expand the emergency department, enhance inpatient and outpatient behavioral health services, and update portions of the hospital, Tower said.

“These changes are designed to strengthen the hospital’s 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,” Tower said in a statement.

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.

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’ privacy when they seek mental health services.

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.

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’s endoscopy center, this round is not eliminating any services, Tower said.

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’s service cuts, according to data shared with bondholders.

After last year’s 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.

Tower’s anchor is Reading Hospital in West Reading, Pa. In additional to Pottstown, it owns Phoenixville Hospital, plus St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children in North Philadelphia in a 50-50 joint venture with Drexel University. Tower previously owned Brandywine, Jennersville, and Chestnut Hill Hospitals.

It closed Brandywine and Jennersville and sold Chestnut Hill to a group led by Temple University Health System.

Tower recently announced that Jefferson Health, Nemours Children’s Health, and Temple University Health System are working on forming an alliance to support St. Chris clinically. Last week, Tower said that it had formed a clinical affiliation to expand advanced care in its markets.