Kudos to Lookout public health correspondent Ashli Blow for reporting on RiverBend chief hospital executive Jim McGovern trying to influence medical care decisions, even though he is unlicensed to do so.

No one has asked me why I think PeaceHealth and some of its high-level staff have made a number of egregious decisions in the last couple of years, but I can tell you why: Peace Health has lost its soul. The departure of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace has made way for a capitalist-driven system that is having a devastating impact on the health of our community. 

As an employee of what was then Sacred Heart General Hospital for a number of years in the 1980s and ’90s, I am outraged at the organization’s recent decisions to reduce operating costs at the expense of quality care, for the sake of profit. These decisions include closing the emergency department on Hilyard Street, contracting out emergency medical care with a for-profit group based in Atlanta and refusing to honor Gov. Tina Kotek’s request to postpone its outsourcing decision. Now we learn that McGovern has been trying to influence medical care decisions that impact reimbursement and profit-making opportunities.  

I’m trying to understand how PeaceHealth will improve care by hiring physicians who are unfamiliar with the resources in our community that might result in delays – unlike one physician who treated my late husband after he had a stroke, or another who discovered cancerous lesions following my husband’s MRI, even though he entered the ER for COVID. Both physicians acted swiftly to run tests and make referrals to local neurologists and oncologists.

I used to cringe when people would refer to Sacred Heart as “sacred wallet,” because that description didn’t describe the mission-driven organization I worked for, one that subsidized millions of dollars of patient care for the uninsured and was instrumental in creating organizations such as White Bird and Volunteers in Medicine, to ensure that quality health care was accessible to all.

Shame on you, PeaceHealth.

Chris Cunningham
Eugene