Some Crozer Health employees receive layoff notices amid potential shutdown: "People are going to die"
Despite efforts to find a buyer to save the bankrupt Crozer Health System in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, people say they've received layoff notices.
Renee Masella has been with Crozer for nine years as an occupational therapist with the home care and hospice department. She said some workers got the bad news on Friday.
"That we'd all be losing our jobs, that the home care and hospice department had 60 days, and that was it," Masella said. "They were cutting our services completely."
Masella and several dozen of her colleagues visit sick people in their homes, including those recently discharged from the hospital. They're there to help them get back on their feet.
"Not to be somber, but the people are going to die," Masella said. "I truly believe that, 100%. People will die as a result of them closing."
CBS News Philadelphia has been trying to speak with Crozer about those claims and what would happen to patient care and safety if these hospitals close, but they haven't responded. Three thousand workers like Masella are also in limbo. They're caught in an ugly back-and-forth fight to save a financially doomed health system.
"All of us have been holding on really tight and taking it week by week, day by day, actually," Masella said. "The uncertainty of the services has been the hardest part for all of us. We just keep showing up, no matter what. We just keep showing up."
On Monday night, Crozer's CEO announced his resignation, effective on Friday.
An attorney for Prospect Medical Holdings, the owner of the Crozer system, told a bankruptcy judge last week that some of the hospitals' "service lines" would be transitioned out while they work to find a buyer for the system.
Ob-gyn was identified, but there was no mention of Masella's department. An additional $6 million was provided to the system to keep it running through this week.
"To think that that's it, that they could just close like that, it's gut-wrenching, it's gut-wrenching and it has us all just devastated," Masella said.
CBS News Philadelphia has repeatedly reached out to Crozer spokespeople for comment about what other departments may potentially be on the chopping block. We have not heard back.
As for individual employees, as that June 10 deadline approaches, they've been told they'll hear from human resources.
