How has Lancaster General Health changed in 10 years? | Health

Services and staff have expanded at Lancaster General Health since its merger with Penn Medicine in 2015.

“If there’s one thing that’s different over the last 10 years, it’s our ability, and really, a growing ability … to provide more advanced services, beyond what Lancaster General Health was able to do prior to becoming part of Penn Medicine, a greater amount of that advanced care that we’re actually able to provide right here in our community,” said Penn Medicine Lancaster General Health CEO John Herman.

Those advancements include new treatments for cancer and stroke patients, more access to clinical research and a growing number of staff members. While LNP | LancasterOnline reported skepticism about health system mergers in 2014 when the Penn Medicine Lancaster General Health merger was announced, Herman said the last decade has shown significant growth.

One major achievement is the Proton Therapy Center at the Ann B. Barshinger Cancer Institute, which opened in 2022 and allows cancer patients to receive this specialized type of radiation therapy locally instead of traveling to Philadelphia or Baltimore.

Another new addition is CAR T-Cell therapy, a type of immunotherapy used for specific blood cancers, he said. By March, approximately 19 people will have received the treatment, which became available at the Ann B. Barshinger Cancer Institute in 2022, spokesperson Marcie Brody confirmed in an email.

LG Health has also advanced its stroke program — it added a stroke intervention called mechanical thrombectomy — and its neurology program, Herman said. The number of neurologists at LG Health has increased, he said, and a “significant” number of them are subspecialized.

Behavioral health saw growth as well, both among its core services and its new offering of interventional psychiatry services, Herman said. A recent addition is the Behavioral Health Center at Lancaster General Hospital, which houses the Interventional Psychiatry Program and the new Crisis Walk-In Center. And in 2020, LG Health opened a fertility program, Brody confirmed.

Herman said that during his four-year tenure, no services at the health system were discontinued — instead, services grew. In the 2015 to 2021 period before Herman’s hiring, no services were discontinued, Brody confirmed.

Another area of growth is access to clinical research, Herman said.

Since the merger, LG Health has “at least doubled the number of patients that are on a clinical trial, and really it’s providing them with new, novel ways of treating whatever disease they have,” Herman said.

LG Health programs have benefited from the connection with Penn Medicine, with experts from Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania coming to Lancaster, providing their expertise to local teams or doing both, Herman said. There are 68 physicians and 38 advanced practice providers from Philadelphia who provide care in Lancaster County.

Staffing has been another area of expansion since the merger with Penn Medicine. LG Health has grown its staff from 7,100 in 2015 to 9,300 in 2025, Brody confirmed. Medical staff has also increased during that period, Herman said, from 250 employed physicians to more than 500. Advanced practice providers increased from less than 100 to over 450. Before the merger, LG Health had six or so neurologists, and now has close to 30, Brody confirmed.

However, Herman noted that there were “personnel challenges” during the pandemic — many staff decided that they wanted to leave the health care industry, he said. But since the middle of the pandemic, when hundreds of travel nurses were employed, the health system now employs none, and has grown its own nursing team, Herman said. In March 2023, LG Health laid off fewer than 65 employees.

Impacts of mergers

When Penn Medicine and LG Health first raised the possibility of consolidating in 2014, an LNP | LancasterOnline article reported the potential benefits and drawbacks to these types of mergers. Dr. Hilda Shirk, president and CEO of what is now Lancaster Health Center, questioned in 2015 whether a larger entity would value LG Health’s connection and commitment to the community. Lancaster Health Center has received financial support from LG Health.

According to the American Hospital Association, hospital mergers and acquisitions have a number of benefits, including to patient care — a fact sheet from the group cited reduction in health care costs, benefits to financial sustainability, improvements in certain outcomes, reductions in readmission rates and mortality measures, and access to a wider range of specialists or services.

Becoming affiliated with a health system “can help keep hospitals open and serving patients and communities, particularly in rural and other underserved areas. It also can enable hospitals to improve quality of patient care by standardizing clinical protocols, investing to upgrade services, and deploying additional staff where needed,” the association said in a statement.

Kim Yakowski, a spokesperson for the Hospital and Healthsystem Association of Pennsylvania, added that mergers may also bring access to capital to invest in infrastructure, technology and initiatives that benefit the community.

But there can be downsides to mergers. Martin Gaynor, an expert in health care and antitrust, told LNP in 2014 that, based on U.S. health system mergers in the years prior to the Penn Medicine Lancaster General Health merger, “the benefits have been elusive.”

More than 10 years later, Gaynor’s still skeptical. There is no consistent evidence that hospital mergers improve patient outcomes or quality of care, Gaynor said. However, this finding is based on the average from around 1,600 or 1,700 mergers and does not mean that a particular merger won’t lead to better care, said Gaynor, who once served as director of the Bureau of Economics at the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.

Teresa Hartmann, assistant professor of nursing at Millersville University — who worked at Lancaster General Hospital until 2013 — said that since the merger she’s seen increased access to resources, including access to specialities. And she’s seen a “broader perspective” among nurses in the classroom, which she said would hopefully lead to improved patient outcomes.

Herman said that LG Health has maintained quality since 2015, citing Lancaster General Hospital’s five-star rating from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, its place in the Healthgrades top 50 hospitals list, and its Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade of A.

“In terms of quality … because we’ve enhanced access to high-level care and care overall within our community, I would suggest that we’ve increased the quality of care that we’re providing in Lancaster as a result of coming together as part of Penn Medicine,” Herman said.