Below is a memo from the CEO of Lowell Community Health Center in Lowell, Massachusetts announcing that the center will be temporarily laying off 160 staff in efforts of keeping the doors open and serving the community through these trying times of health crisis.
Dear Community Partners & Supporters,
we are all deeply saddened by the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on our families and friends, and the health of Greater Lowell. No community, indeed no country has been spared its effects.
I am truly grateful and humbled by your care and concern at this time. From notes of support to donations, to responses on Facebook, you’ve uplifted us in so many ways, just as this community has done for the past 50 years. That makes the news I am about to share all the more difficult, but I feel you deserve the clear, unvarnished truth about the impact of this crisis, and how it is affecting our staff, and the Health Center.
We have made the painful but economically necessary decision to furlough 160 of our staff, effective March 30, 2020. As I’m sure you can imagine, this decision was not made easily or lightly. It is intended to safeguard jobs and operations in the long-term while helping us survive this immediate, very real financial and health crisis. We sincerely hope this is only temporary.
Over the past two weeks, our revenue has significantly dropped, yet our staff has worked tirelessly to keep our patients and each other healthy and stem the spread of the coronavirus.
We are now conducting most of our visits via telehealth. Our main goal is to keep people safe, which means keeping them out of the Health Center.
Because we must be, we are very focused on the bottom line right now. It’s about keeping our doors open.
It is also paramount that we do not lose sight of our roots as a COMMUNITY health center. We remain committed to our mission of serving everyone in Greater Lowell, both in the Health Center and by reaching out into the community to assure their needs are met.
We know emergency state and federal aid will soon arrive. But it simply won’t be sufficient to avoid making this gut-wrenching decision regarding our Lowell CHC family. Please keep all of our employees in your thoughts at this difficult time.
Thank you for your continued goodwill. Working together, we can remain strong and continue to care for Lowell for another 50 years.
Sincerely,
Susan West Levine – Chief Executive Officer