In response to a NewsLanc request to attend the board meetings of Lancaster General Hospital, a high ranking LGH official responded as follows:
“Lancaster General Health and Lancaster General Hospital are both considered public charities under the IRS code. As noted in a prior email to NewsLanc from John Lines, our Board meetings and Committee meetings are not open to the public other than the one public meeting of the hospital board that is held each year.”
We don’t question the legal correctness of their decision, but conducting the public’s business behind closed door is worrisome, especially when partially through market dominance LGH is able to extract well over a hundred million dollars a year in profits from county residents.
We will be examining this issue further in the future. But for starters, we recommend that a county commissioner, the mayor of Lancaster, and the chair of the School District of Lancaster be made ex-officio members of the LGH board.
Then the public would have a voice in these insular proceedings, now conducted by board members who were selected by board members, and who may be unduly lavishing funds on Lancaster General Hospital rather than contributing to public health, education, and social safety net programs that are languishing for lack of adequate funding.
I have been advised that:
1) If I appear on the property and try to film I will be arrested.
2) There are no cameras permitted even at the one meeting per year that is open to the public.
It seems very appropriate were three key offices representing the public interest be given seats on the LancasterGeneralHospital board. After all, LGH is the not only the largest non-profit in the community, but it is profitable (wildly profitable} in contrast to many local nonprofits which serve the poor and disadvantaged. The others charge minimal or no fees and have to scratch and beg for funds year after year.
LGH does make payments in lieu of taxes, but I wonder what it would pay in income taxes if it were a taxable entity.
We highly respect LGH’s excellent reputation for providing quality health care; we just wish it was more aggressive in using its surplus to address other pressing community needs.
LGH does indeed pay Lancaster City in PILOT several times what its tax-exempt properties would have paid in real estate taxes. From that and several other perspectives, LGH is indeed a good citizen in its community.
But for perspective, consider this: LGH could have paid cash from its profits to build the downtown convention center over each one of the last several years. Counting the time from when the “hotel tax” was first collected, it will take Lancaster County taxpayers nearly a half-century to pay off a similar amount of money.