‘Spillover effects’ linger in emergency care at PeaceHealth RiverBend

A previous version of this story incorrectly stated what services were eliminated at PeaceHealth University District in Eugene. Behavioral health services are still offered at the facility. Lookout Eugene-Springfield regrets the error.

Every day looks different for Foley Galvin, an emergency department nurse at PeaceHealth Sacred Heart Medical Center at RiverBend.

Heart attacks. Strokes. Respiratory illness. She sees all of it — especially when working triage, directing patients to where they need to go, whether that’s for lab work, an X-ray or immediate treatment.

“We’re really having to cover so much, like geographic volume,” said Galvin, who spoke to Lookout Eugene-Springfield as a member of her union, Oregon Nurses Association, not on behalf of her employer. “The number of people we are seeing and the types of patients we are getting are very sick people.” 

Galvin has worked in RiverBend’s emergency department for five years. She says she’s seeing more patients since PeaceHealth closed the University District emergency department in December 2023, eliminating Eugene’s only hospital within the city limits.

Now, with more than a year and a half gone by, long-term data from the Oregon Health Authority backs up her experience with hard numbers. At RiverBend, emergency visits jumped from 9,883 in 2023 to 13,687 in 2024. That first quarter of 2024 was its busiest first quarter in six years. (Data for 2025 is not available yet from OHA.) In tandem, the average time patients spent in the emergency department also rose, reaching nearly seven hours, more than an hour above the statewide average. 

PeaceHealth Oregon Network Chief Hospital Officer Jim McGovern called the numbers surprising when Lookout Eugene-Springfield presented him with the data during an interview Monday. Generally, McGovern said, he looks at emergency department numbers in shorter time frames and by the types of patients coming in for care, an approach that allows him to identify issues while they’re occurring. Big picture, he believes wait times are already much shorter this year compared to 2024.

McGovern’s process improvements are in the details, he said. His numbers drill down to the hour, sometimes showing the emergency department receiving 15 to 20 patients an hour — for three or four hours straight.

Figuring out how to reduce that volume is a challenge he’s taken on in a role that has long focused on process improvement. It may include a renovation tentatively scheduled for this fall.

Closing University District

PeaceHealth’s decision to wind down operations at the downtown Eugene campus didn’t just eliminate an emergency department. It ended most inpatient care, except for behavioral health services. 

In 2023, PeaceHealth executive leadership said the closing stemmed from underutilization. McGovern said most people who came to the University District emergency department were seeking social, not medical, services. The hospital was losing about $2 million a month driven in part by an imbalance in its payer mix, or the types of insurance patients had.

Nearly 57 percent of the patients at University District used Medicare and Medicaid, which reimburse hospitals at much lower rates than commercial insurance. 

“At that point in time, we were struggling to staff either one of the emergency departments. We were skeleton crews at best,” McGovern said. “Combining them allowed us to have better staffing.” 

Union members and staff with the Oregon Nurses Association say the transition from two PeaceHealth emergency departments to one was difficult.

And though PeaceHealth moved staff to RiverBend and maintains a relatively high number of beds there, about 60, that doesn’t replace the physical presence of hospital care in Eugene, said Kevin Mealy, spokesperson for the nurse association’s advocacy team. 

“Doesn’t take a brain surgeon to realize that’s a problem that does create spillover effects at RiverBend,” Mealy said. “Health care access is always tenuous, especially if you’re talking about something like the ER, where you need a bed and a provider when you need them.

“PeaceHealth created some of their own problems for the community and now has to bear the brunt of closing a hospital in a major city.”  

The increase in patient volume and the length of time they stay in the department correlates with the 2023 closure. But McGovern said it’s also a symptom of the growing strain on the health care system. 

PeaceHealth’s shutdown followed years of consolidation across Eugene’s health care landscape, including the 2020 buyout of Oregon Medical Group by Optum, a subsidiary of UnitedHealth — a move that has left many patients still searching for primary care.

“If there’s a failure point in the community, it rolls into the emergency department,” said McGovern. 

Hospitals look for fixes

PeaceHealth has continued to operate an urgent care clinic in Eugene and is looking to expand options for lower-severity cases that don’t require emergency-level care, such as minor injuries, infections, or routine illnesses.

McGovern said that RiverBend is planning emergency department renovations as soon as this fall. Updates include expanding a fast-track area designed to reduce wait times and improve patient flow. Additional renovations will add 70 inpatient beds — through a new behavior health project and an eighth-floor remodel — helping move patients out of the emergency department and into appropriate care.

Meanwhile, McKenzie-Willamette Medical Center is considering a potential satellite emergency department to expand access for west Eugene residents, many of whom face a 20-minute drive or more to reach either of Springfield’s full-service hospitals. 

The nurses association argues that while urgent care clinics and satellite emergency departments are steps in the right direction, they don’t address underlying issues.

These short-term care facilities can treat and stabilize patients, but often lack the capacity to admit them or provide treatment for complex conditions. 

That level of care still requires a full-service hospital like RiverBend, where the work continues on the floor for nurses like Galvin. She says some processes have already been updated, and staffing levels now feel more in line with the number of patients coming through the doors.

While emergency visits can still last several hours, many patients are now seeing a doctor more quickly thanks to new systems, with much of the wait time stemming from lab or imaging results, Galvin said.

But again, every shift she works looks different. 

“It is just kind of unpredictable, ” she said. “Some days we’ll see hundreds of patients, and then the next day we’ll see 50 fewer patients, kind of inexplicably.

“Some days, truly, are just busier than other days.”