Regarding the decision by PeaceHealth to replace the local Eugene Emergency Physicians’ management of their emergency department with ApolloMD (a corporate so-called health care provider), the PeaceHealth website contains this statement:

“Our promise guides what we do and how we go about doing it. It is relationship-centered. It is based on the premise that everything in the environment affects recovery and healing. Very little is neutral; almost everything can either enhance or impair the healing process for our patients and their families.”

Relationship-centered? Enhance or impair the healing process for our patients and their families? 

How about impair? Is getting rid of an emergency department contract that has worked for decades relationship-centered? No. From its founding by Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace, in transferring their work to “laypersons,” they assumed their vision to continue. According to the website: “The Sisters entrust to their lay colleagues the important mission of carrying out the healing mission of Jesus by being dedicated to exceptional medicine and compassionate care.”

ApolloMD and exceptional medicine and compassionate care? Oxymoron.

How appalled the original founders of Sacred Heart (now PeaceHealth) would be, seeing their mission totally destroyed by capitalism at its worst. Health care for profit. Destroying local relationships. All the while Eugene Emergency Physicians is working so hard to provide the best care possible. 

Go to peacehealth.org and see for yourself how PeaceHealth has failed us. Then let all involved in this disaster know how very damaging their decision is to our community. 

Do the right thing, PeaceHealth: Contract with Eugene Emergency Physicians!

Carol Ipsen
Eugene