Patients trust hospitals with their lives. That trust has been shattered at Penn State Health's Milton S. Hershey Medical Center.

An investigation by Spotlight PA found that throughout 2025 and into this year, Hershey Medical Center struggled to keep a usable supply of sterile surgical instruments — and kept operating anyway. Heart surgery was performed with tools that employees later confirmed were unsterile. During an emergency brain operation, staff could not find a clean set of instruments. An employee described it as "came down to life or death." In another case, staff opened more than 20 contaminated instrument sets and cannibalized tools from a gynecology kit to complete a hernia surgery.

Internal records reveal a hospital that was warned, repeatedly, and did not stop. One pregnant employee told administrators she was "scared to death" to get her own C-section at the facility. A senior hospital official wrote that safety behaviors were "not hard wired as standard work."

Other hospitals facing similar sterilization crises suspended surgeries. Penn State Health did not.

We call on the Pennsylvania Department of Health to launch an immediate, independent investigation into sterilization practices at Hershey Medical Center — and to suspend non-emergency surgeries until the hospital is cleared as safe.