A day after its CEO resigned, Ellwood City Medical Center has effectively closed its doors, at least temporarily, raising further doubts about the future of the Lawrence County hospital.
Tuesday evening, a sign had been posted on the hospital’s main entrance saying “all clinical services are suspended until further notice effective 12.10.19.,” and CEO Beverly Annarumo – who announced her resignation Monday – confirmed the closure.
Ms. Annarumo said Grant White, CEO of Florida-based Americore Health, which acquired the hospital in 2017, made the decision Tuesday to close the hospital for now. “His goal is to reopen in January,” she said.
Dr. Rachel Levine, the Pennsylvania secretary of health, also released a statement Tuesday regarding the suspension of services.
"While it is disappointing that hospital ownership made this choice, the department is committed to ensuring that hospital facilities can provide safe care to patients," she said.
"We will be continuing to monitor the facility in the upcoming days and weeks. It is essential that people are aware that if they need medical treatment, they will need to go to another hospital in the area."
The release said anyone needing medical records can contact the hospital at 724-752-0081. It also said the health department was working with the state Department of Labor & Industry to assist hospital employees who have been laid off.
Last week, state health officials banned the hospital from admitting new patients or treating patients in the emergency department due to the failure of its CT scanner and other issues.
With its main revenue source closed off, the community hospital – which has struggled with million-dollar operating losses for years – now has ended its outpatient treatment services as well.
Ms. Annarumo announced Monday that she would resign, effective Jan. 3. That came a week after 92 staff members, representing more than half of the hospital workforce, was furloughed.
“Last week was an emotional roller coaster and quite honestly the final straw for me,” Ms. Annarumo wrote in an email to the Post-Gazette on Tuesday.
Ms. Annarumo, who was chief quality officer at the hospital before succeeding retiring president and CEO Carolyn Izzo in 2017, said she took the job despite the hospital’s financial struggles that reached millions of dollars in operating losses.
“I really wanted to try to make a difference and keep our hospital in the community,” she said. “Wanting to do whatever I could to keep the jobs and necessary health care in our community is frankly all that has kept me going this long.”
She also supported the medical center board’s 2017 decision to be acquired by the Florida-based Americore Health, a for-profit company that was buying other distressed, rural hospitals with plans to turn them around.
The relationship struggled from the beginning, leading to a layoff that hit 75 to 80 workers in the fall of 2018.
That November, Americore CEO Grant White told a crowd of about 100 Ellwood City-area residents gathered in the borough’s municipal building auditorium that he expected the hospital to be profitable in a month.
“The worst is behind us,” he told them.
Efforts to contact Mr. White on Tuesday were unsuccessful.
Despite Mr. White’s assurances late last year, reports surfaced just weeks into the New Year of employee paychecks bouncing or being delayed, prompting dozens of departures before the payroll situation seem to stabilize last spring.
It was a temporary respite, Ms. Annarumo wrote Tuesday.
Beginning in September and October, “I started to see a change occurring at the corporate level,” she wrote, without giving specifics, and those developments led her to question her role there.
“A little over a month ago I wrote my letter of resignation, and talked to a few of the staff here about it, but ultimately I did not turn it in because I still believe that we need this hospital and I still believe in the dedicated people who work here and I couldn’t get past the feeling that I was abandoning my staff and the community,” she said in the email.
“But after the events of the last couple weeks, I just morally, ethically and emotionally was taxed beyond my limits.”
On Tuesday, Ellwood City Borough Manager David Allen said Americore had not delivered a $50,000 payment toward its $280,000 utility bill as promised by Friday so the borough notified the state Department of Health Monday that it would shut off electricity and sewage to the hospital in 37 days.
Because of her previous support for Americore, Ms. Annarumo knows that some blame her for the current crisis. Resigning, she said, “was one of the hardest decisions that I have made because nothing has changed on how I feel about the hospital or the people, but I knew in my heart that I could no longer truthfully represent the hospital.”
“I am very sad and disappointed, and it makes it worse when I know how hard I tried and I see these people bashing me that have not walked a mile in my shoes and have no idea what they are talking about.”
Ms. Annarumo says she doesn’t know what her next move will be, “but I do know that I will still live in this community, my kids still go to school here, and I will always only want my town to prosper.”
business@post-gazette.com
First Published: December 10, 2019, 4:20 p.m.
