Hershey President Abruptly Resigns

By Walter F. Roche Jr.

The president of the Milton S. Hershey Medical Center has abruptly resigned in the wake of the disclosure of serious problems in the facility's liver and kidney transplant programs, both of which have been shutdown for four months.
Deborah Berini's departure was disclosed in a terse press release issued Monday. Hershey and Penn State officials declined to give any reasons. Berini had served in the post since 2018.
The announcement comes following the disclosure on this blog of two critical state Health Department reports on Hershey's abdominal transplant program.
One report cited Hershey for failing to disclose to transplant receipients that the organs they were about to receive had been classified as high risk for failure. The report also cited several cases in which transplant recipients had to be returned to the operating room for problems with the original procedure.
In a second report, also from the state Health Department, the facility was faulted when a live transplant had to be halted after the donor had already been placed under general anesthesia.
The suspension of the abdominal transplant program was not publicly disclosed until facility officials were questioned about one of the critical health reports last week.
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