As our hospital continues to respond to the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, we remain focused on taking care of our patients, taking care of our people, and preventing the spread of disease.

Like all hospitals, in addition to fighting COVID-19 on the front lines of patient care, we have to manage the business impact we are experiencing due to significant decreases in volume and the utilization of services. Declines in utilization are a result of people staying home and practicing smart social distancing, and also because of our decision to reschedule elective and non-urgent procedures, when clinically feasible, in an effort to preserve critical resources needed to care for patients during this global pandemic.

As a result, we have made the difficult decision to place 2% of our Conemaugh Memorial Medical Center employees on temporary leave with partial pay equaling 25% of their salary for their time on leave. We also have been adjusting the hours of our staff to align to the volume and acuity of patients we are seeing – a practice that is commonly used among hospitals, and is being leveraged to a greater extent right now.

These are very hard decisions to make, and we are incredibly sensitive to the impact they have on our employees. However, these are necessary measures to ensure we are maximizing our resources and supporting our teams on the front lines of battling COVID-19.

We are hopeful that we will be able to welcome our employees back to their positions and full schedules soon. Until then, we are grateful to be able to offer them support through LifePoint Health’s CORE Crisis Initiative. CORE, which was created with the purpose of Connecting Our Resources to Employees, is a comprehensive response to how the pandemic is impacting LifePoint employees across the nation.

The CORE Crisis Initiative includes resources such as the partial pay for employees on temporary leave described above, as well as COVID-19 sick pay, child and elder care stipends, a fund for employees experiencing financial hardship, and unlimited EAP services. Investments in these resources have been funded, in part, by temporary salary reductions across LifePoint’s Health Support Center employees and hospital leadership teams, including ours. Additional information is available here.

We thank our staff members across departments for their work in keeping one another and our patients safe during this unprecedented time, and we thank our community for their ongoing support of our heroic staff.