Exterior of the WellSpan Outpatient Center at CityGate on Erick Road in Lancaster city on Thursday, Jan. 9, 2025.
Blaine Shahan / LNP | LancasterOnline
WellSpan hospital police force to be operational by summer 2026
By Aimee Ambrose/The York Dispatch
Blaine Shahan / LNP | LancasterOnline
Exterior of the WellSpan Outpatient Center at CityGate on Erick Road in Lancaster city on Thursday, Jan. 9, 2025.
By summer 2026, WellSpan Health intends to have a new police force set up and operational with a primary presence at its hospital sites across the region.
The company operates nine hospitals in York, Adams, Franklin, Lancaster, Lebanon, Lycoming, Northumberland, Snyder and Union counties as well as more than 250 locations in southcentral Pennsylvania and northern Maryland.
The force will also be present on an as-needed basis at WellSpan’s non-hospital locations across central Pennsylvania.
“While they may respond to (non-hospital locations) as needed, their focus will be the hospitals,” WellSpan spokesperson Ryan Coyle said by email.
The York-based health care provider announced the plans Friday, saying WellSpan police will serve as a private force of armed officers that will work on top of the nonprofit company’s existing security teams.
WellSpan also intends to install weapons detection systems at the entrances to its hospitals, which will include scanning visitors, patients and staff.
The new police and security systems come from moves by WellSpan over the past two years to divert more than $20 million into safety and security, according to the release.
WellSpan’s plan calls for officers to focus primarily on law enforcement for “less-serious crimes” and safety actions in situations involving patients, visitors and staff.
The new force will be built on officers with prior law enforcement experience and Act 120 basic training certifications through Pennsylvania’s Municipal Police Officers Education and Training Commission.
WellSpan also noted that prospective officers will have to undergo additional internal training.
“WellSpan will ensure only qualified candidates with required certifications are hired and trained before they serve in this capacity,” the release stated.
READ: WellSpan makes security changes at its Ephrata hospital following York shooting
Department chief named
The health system named William White, its vice president of public safety, as the emerging new department’s chief. White took the new VP position in March 2024 after working as a security director for WellSpan.
His previous experience includes serving as a public safety and security director for Johns Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore for close to three years and as a Pennsylvania State Police trooper who rose to the rank of major.
WellSpan’s announcement of the new department stated it is not intended to replace state and local law enforcement agencies or their responses to serious crimes at its facilities.
READ: WellSpan’s Outpatient Center at CityGate in Lancaster gets 2 new practices
Violence at health care facilities
WellSpan’s police force plan is the latest in an ongoing series of steps to increase security amid what the organization has cited as a rise in violence in health care facilities.
A U.S. Centers For Disease Control and Prevention report in 2024 cited statistics that health care workers experience workplace violence at larger rates than other injuries, and that the number of workers reporting harassment more than doubled from 2018 to 2022.
A WellSpan vice president voiced a similar statement about increasing health care workplace violence figures in January 2022 when the provider announced an agreement for the York City Police Department to provide four police resource officers for its local facilities.
Hospital violence and security became a larger issue after a gunman, Diogenes Archangel-Ortiz, took hostages at UPMC Memorial Hospital in York County on Feb. 22.
The situation resulted in police shooting and killing Archangel-Ortiz inside the West Manchester Township facility, while shotgun pellets fired by an officer struck and killed West York Borough Police Officer Andrew Duarte.
That same day, on the other side of town, a man allegedly threw glass and threatened staff and security at WellSpan York Hospital. The man was charged with attempted aggravated assault after that incident was resolved.
Following those situations, WellSpan took steps in March to close some hospital entrances as a way of limiting access to the facility. Spokespeople also noted then that the hospital uses metal detectors at the emergency department entrance.
The new plans call for implementing the police force in stages, with completion by the summer of 2026. The new weapons detection system is also expected to be installed in stages, the organization’s release shows.
LNP | LancasterOnline staff writer Lucy Albright contributed to this report.
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