The PeaceHealth story of Eugene Emergency Physicians and ApolloMD seems to show what can happen when the equivalent of private equity business perspectives infects administrative personnel decisions and the cost part of the equation of medical care becomes the priority over patient needs.

Exactly what Oregon Senate Bill 951 was designed to prevent appears to be what has happened. Eugene Emergency Physicians personnel have offered emails from Chief Hospital Executive Dr. Jim McGovern that they believe show McGovern attempting to shape medical care decisions for patients — something that by law is reserved for ER medical personnel.

This email evidence was presented to top PeaceHealth administrators, according to Eugene Emergency Physicians’s public statements. It was after that contact that PeaceHealth announced the change in ER providers. The sequence in timing makes one wonder if the change in providers was related to administrative awareness of complaints about McGovern’s emails to ER personnel. Was the choice made to change providers rather than constrain McGovern? If so — and we do not know whether or not this was the case — such action does not support the supposed commitment to community wellbeing that PeaceHealth uses in its marketing. 

It may be that the larger issue of how we as a nation fund medical care is at the heart of the problem. Hospitals need enough financial support to carry out their goal of providing quality medical care for the communities they serve. McGovern presumably was watching the bottom line, but the method and results insofar as we have been informed seem to have been inappropriate. But the bottom line does need to be attended to, or closure similar to PeaceHealth’s University District hospital will be RiverBend’s fate as well. That is a fate none should hope for. RiverBend is an outstanding medical facility, and we, its future, present and past patients need for it to continue to be such a quality facility. 

Medicare reimbursement to hospitals and doctors is pathetically inadequate. One cannot continue to offer sophisticated technology for diagnosis and treatment without financial support that pays the full price of its acquisition, use and maintenance. No medical insurance or reimbursement system does that now.

The problem is larger than the emergency department staffing issue and it needs addressing and solving. Kudos to Ashli Blow and her colleagues at Lookout for working to get to the heart of the problems. Please keep on digging.  

Dorothy Crafts
Eugene