Everything going on with PeaceHealth, Eugene Emergency Physicians, ApolloMD from Atlanta and Lane Emergency Physicians LLC being run by a physician owner in Illinois reminds me of the 1993 commercial about Pace Picante sauce. In the commercial, a group of cowboys eating dinner are outraged to be served salsa not from Texas, but from “New York City?”

Except here, the issue is emergency patients in Lane County saying, “Atlanta? Illinois?”

This mess has to be currently impacting care, when physicians at RiverBend are working knowing that they may be booted in three months. How many good physicians are practicing while trying to juggle whether they might leave because of a job offer elsewhere rather than risk staying and becoming unemployed?

As a 77-year-old retired neurologist with cancer, I’m concerned about institutional memory. It takes time for a new physician to be fully functional in a specific emergency department and hospital. I’ve been one. One can’t plunk down a bunch of new physicians and mid-levels into RiverBend’s emergency department and expect it to operate normally. It won’t.

It is time for the public to see a clear financial analysis of how this changeover will be good for both PeaceHealth and patient care. But no financial analysis I know of tracks costs of long waits, delayed care, being seen by a physician who doesn’t know the system or the area, or having first responders unable to return to the field because of backups in the ER. It wasn’t a good idea to close the University District hospital and rip it apart, but here we are.

I’ve long said that things that are important and countable should be counted, and things that are important but not countable should be honored. And we should know the difference between the two. I would hope a Catholic facility like PeaceHealth would feel that non-quantifiable value matters, and act in accordance with their mission.

Michael S. Smith, M.D.
Eugene