QuickTake:

In a letter to Gov. Tina Kotek, PeaceHealth said it won’t delay its plan to change to a new provider for emergency department staffing. PeaceHealth also offered to publish regular updates to keep the community informed about the switch. 

PeaceHealth rebuffed Gov. Tina Kotek’s request to slow down its plans to transition to Atlanta-based contractor ApolloMD for emergency department staffing.

PeaceHealth did offer to regularly publish metrics to keep the community updated about how the transition is working, including patient mortality data and emergency department staffing details.

PeaceHealth outlined its rationale to reject Kotek’s request to delay the transition but also to publish more emergency department details in a letter to Kotek released Friday, March 20. 

PeaceHealth’s response comes as executives are planning to start Lane Emergency Physicians, a new practice that an Illinois-certified physician currently seeking Oregon credentials will own. The new company will staff PeaceHealth’s three emergency departments in Springfield, Cottage Grove and Florence, with ApolloMD providing administrative and operational support in tasks like recruiting, billing and data management.

The new group will replace Eugene Emergency Physicians, which has a contract with PeaceHealth that expires in June. The group has contracted with PeaceHealth for 35 years.

The transition has stoked concerns in the community and among elected leaders about what the change will mean for the quality of care, especially after 41 medical professionals with Eugene Emergency Physicians – most of them doctors – signed a pledge to not work with ApolloMD for at least 90 days.

In the letter to Kotek, Dr. Jim McGovern, chief hospital executive of Oregon PeaceHealth, acknowledged a need to rebuild community trust.

“As I recently shared internally with our caregivers, I should have communicated more clearly about the rationale for this change, the criteria used to select a new partner and what the decision would mean for the day-to-day operations of our hospitals,” McGovern wrote. “I am committed to more direct and consistent engagement as we move forward.”

McGovern also defended the process to pick ApolloMD, which started in November 2025, calling it a “structured and rigorous process.”

“I want to be clear that this decision and the implementation timeline are not rushed,” McGovern wrote. 

PeaceHealth has centered its planning on a service implementation date of July 1, the letter said.

“Introducing a delay at this stage would create meaningful patient safety risk by undermining the stability and certainty required to safely operate emergency departments,” the letter said. “Reliable transition dates are essential to workforce planning, physician recruitment and clinical readiness.”

McGovern said a delay would create uncertainty for recruited physicians and complicate staffing as Eugene Emergency Physicians-affiliated physicians leave.

PeaceHealth also proposed publishing “community-facing transition dashboards” that show emergency department details such as mortality, diversion, “door to doctor” times and recruitment statistics.

“These dashboards would provide real-time visibility, reinforce public trust and ensure identification of and response to any emerging risks beginning in April and throughout the transition period,” McGovern wrote. 

McGovern said PeaceHealth will not replace its emergency physicians with a temporary workforce, but noted some temporary physician staffing will be used, especially when the transition starts. 

“The transition dashboards described above will also track the number of physicians moving through our hospitals’ medical staff credentialing processes,” McGovern wrote. 

A separate two-page document spelled out some details of PeaceHealth’s request for proposals for an emergency department provider. Six organizations were invited to participate and four responded after a “broad and intentional market scan,” the document said. 

The document did not identify the four organizations, though Eugene Emergency Physicians was one of them. 

A committee that included McGovern and individuals from nursing, finance and emergency departments of all three Lane County hospitals evaluated the responses.

The criteria included qualifications, experience, ability to recruit and retain quality physicians, management platform sophistication, quality improvement programs and metrics, financial stability, transition planning, performance on operational and clinical indicators, patient satisfaction results and cost.

Each organization had two rounds of interviews and the committee evaluated them with a scorecard of 41 established criteria in nine categories. During the process, a nonvoting member was the point of contact for submissions.

Kotek’s office didn’t immediately respond Friday to a request for comment about PeaceHealth’s letter.

Also Friday, Eugene Emergency Physicians sued PeaceHealth and ApolloMD, alleging their business model violates a state law that regulates the corporate practice of medicine.

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Ben Botkin covers politics and policy in Lane County. He has worked as a journalist since 2003, most recently at the Oregon Capital Chronicle, where he covered justice, health and human services and documented regional efforts to combat fentanyl addiction. Botkin has worked in statehouses in Idaho, Nevada, Oklahoma and, of course, Oregon. When he's not working, you'll find him road tripping across the West, hiking or surfing along the Oregon Coast.