Lancaster General Health has decided to eliminate medical and dental coverage for employees who work fewer than 20 hours a week.
The new policy will take effect at the beginning of 2011, according to a letter employees received early this month from Mary Miskey, LGH's vice president of human resources.
Employees who are not working 20 hours a week by that time will be offered COBRA coverage, the letter said.
The policy will affect less than 3 percent of LGH's 7,500 employees, LGH spokesman John Lines said Monday.
The actual number of employees affected will be determined by how many try to increase their hours to 20 or more, Miskey said Monday.
"We feel that the employees who wish to increase their hours will be able to do so," she said.
Miskey said LGH will do what it can to increase the hours of part-time employees. She said they may have to move to another department to work 20 hours.
"We really do want these individuals to stay in the system," she said, adding that current employees will be given preference for new jobs.
"We've given employees 15 months," Miskey added. "That is a generous amount of time to look internally for work."
Lines said it was not an easy decision for a health-care institution to to reduce health-care benefits for some employees.
"We understand why our employees would be upset about it," he said, "but it is a change that we believe is necessary to bring us into alignment with other health-care providers and other companies."
Lines and Miskey said the new policy would have been implemented regardless of the economic climate.
Miskey said LGH must be concerned not only about employees but the community.
"We always need to be very conscious of how we spend dollars because they are community dollars," she said.
LGH made a profit of $113 million last year. Because the organization is non-profit, all of that money must be reinvested.
For example, Lines said, LGH is establishing a new method of maintaining medical records that will cost tens of millions of dollars.
"Everything we earn stays here to meet the growing demands for health care in Lancaster County," he said.