PeaceHealth exec pressed doctors on care decisions for years, newly obtained emails show

While making life-or-death decisions in the emergency department inside PeaceHealth Sacred Heart Medical Center at RiverBend, several doctors said messages like this would unexpectedly appear on their screens from someone upstairs.

“I see you’re in the RB ED. Rm 20. I’m reviewing admissions.”

Jim McGovern, chief hospital executive for PeaceHealth’s Oregon network, would open patient charts remotely, doctors said, then second-guess their clinical judgment and weigh in on treatments they were delivering.

The emails and text messages were troubling beyond micromanaging for the physicians. McGovern holds an administrative medical license, which is intended for those working in oversight or management roles. 

According to the Oregon Medical Board, which regulates physicians, McGovern has never held an active clinical license in Oregon to provide direct patient care. 

This message continued, “(Patient) admitted for intractable n/v (nausea/vomiting) … I can’t see that we’ve even given her anti-emetics to control her nv. Unless I’m missing it symptom control?🤷”

PeaceHealth’s top leadership placed McGovern on leave April 9. The move came after the hospital’s Medical Executive Committee had received copies of emails from Eugene Emergency Physicians, or EEP. The group — 32 doctors and nine physician assistants — had put together a packet that included more than 300 pages of emails that they say were exchanged with the executive over the past three years. Emails that EEP physicians said they received from McGovern over the past year included:

• “Stop admitting people just because they have a mass and start pushing the outpatient process.”
• “I’m not seeing justification for an MRI. Can you justify this clinically please or stop the practice.”
• “Stop admitting people for biopsies and further imaging when they are stable … the outpatient world is going to have to figure it out.” 

But the paper trail goes back even longer, to 2021, and includes doctors in the Hospital Medicine department, according to new documents Lookout Eugene-Springfield obtained and authenticated. The communications show doctors raising concerns about what they describe as “dangerous” situations for patients and receiving responses they said were dismissive.

In scrubs, Dr. Bianca Jacobs and her colleague, Dr. Annaleigh Boggess, sat down with Lookout Eugene-Springfield between shifts to review the documents and talk about how receiving such messages affected them.  

“We work very hard, and so when I received an email, it felt like a blow to who I am as a physician,” said Jacobs. 

“It has taken a toll on many of us,” Boggess said. 

Despite the questioning and pressure, the doctors said they pushed back in the interest of patient safety — and believe doing so may have cost them their jobs. PeaceHealth announced in February it was terminating EEP’s contract and switching to Georgia-based ApolloMD for emergency physician staffing.

In the weeks since, EEP has met with legislators at the Oregon State Capitol, rallied with signs outside RiverBend and sued the hospital, alleging violations of Oregon’s corporate practice of medicine laws.

But until last month, EEP physicians had not shared the allegations involving McGovern outside their practice, and for a time, even some within the group were unaware of the details. 

“It was individualized people being affected by this, and to be frank, mostly women in our group being affected,” Boggess said. “A lot of the men in our group had no idea what was going on.” 

“We ultimately decided, yes, we have this fear of retaliation, but the bigger fear is the safety of the community, the patients that we care for in the hospital, and to not come forward with this would be a disservice,” she said. “It just took some time to synthesize everything and come to that decision.” 

‘Broader questions about oversight’  

The Medical Executive Committee functions much like a city council representing people in neighborhoods, but for clinicians working in various hospital departments. At RiverBend, it’s a peer-nominated group of 20 physicians and two advanced practice clinicians, who meet with executive leadership over issues on behalf of the broader staff. 

In March, it received a packet of emails and a timeline from EEP. 

In turn, Dr. Will Emerson, chief of staff and a member of the committee, presented the emails in a special meeting April 8 to the hospital’s medical staff — nearly 400 clinicians, including physicians employed directly by PeaceHealth and others contracted through specialty groups. 

The next day, April 9, McGovern was put on leave.

Emerson wrote top leaders an email April 10. In it, he said that the medical staff formally requested PeaceHealth reverse its contract decision and reinstate EEP as the emergency services provider. He wrote that the procurement process for ApolloMD “raises the strong possibility that the RFP decision may have been retaliatory in nature.” 

PeaceHealth maintains its decision to change emergency physician management companies was made by a “multi-disciplinary team of leaders” through a thorough process, and “was never a decision made by one individual.”

But those assurances have done little to ease concerns among the committee and broader medical staff. 

Friday, April 17, Emerson sent an update to medical staff with a new review, conducted by attorneys, showing members of the requests-for-proposal committee had knowledge of the interactions between EEP and McGovern. Those members included Kim Ruscher, PeaceHealth’s chief medical officer, and Heather Wall, chief nursing officer and interim chief hospital executive. 

PeaceHealth spokesperson Jim Murez declined Lookout Eugene-Springfield’s request for an interview with top PeaceHealth leadership. McGovern and Ruscher did not return calls. 

“When concerns are described across multiple years, multiple departments, and numerous physicians, it raises broader questions about oversight, accountability, culture of safety, and the effectiveness of internal reporting and response systems,” committee member Emerson said Tuesday in an email to Lookout Eugene-Springfield.  

“It also raises concern about whether existing structures were sufficient to protect both patients and physicians when those concerns were brought forward.” 

Trust weakens in the system 

PeaceHealth operates hospitals and clinics in Oregon, Washington and Alaska.

Eleven people are on PeaceHealth’s top leadership team, including Sarah Ness, president and CEO, and Richard DeCarlo, executive vice president and chief operating officer. 

DeCarlo, who has worked at PeaceHealth for nine years, publicly stated he “supports the final decision recommended by the Oregon leadership team, including Dr. McGovern and Dr. Ruscher.” 

Ness, who started her post in January, encouraged staff to embrace change in a video message posted to PeaceHealth’s YouTube channel in March. 

“The truth is we are still dealing with the long-term consequences of not always operating as one PeaceHealth,” Ness said in the nearly three-minute video. “I don’t expect you to simply trust, because we say the word trust. Trust isn’t a declaration. It’s something we must earn through clarity, consistency, humility, and time. So here is my commitment to you: I will keep speaking the truth.” 

But for physicians such as Dr. Chris Kyle, a urologist on the medical staff at RiverBend, trust has been eroded. Kyle, who practices with Oregon Urology Institute, works alongside emergency physicians when patients come to the emergency department with urgent needs such as severe kidney stones. 

The comments from DeCarlo and Ness came after 93% of the medical staff voted they had no confidence in McGovern, Ruscher or the decision to change emergency physician contractors.

“After the vote of no confidence, I think great leadership, or even average leadership, would have stopped and questioned whether [McGovern and Ruscher] were going down the right course, and instead the kind of feeling we get is just more of a doubling down,” Kyle said. 

Kyle said placing McGovern on administrative leave was the “right decision.” But in the same announcement, DeCarlo told staff PeaceHealth would still move to Lane Emergency Physicians.

Lane Emergency Physicians is a new practice being established by PeaceHealth and ApolloMD — to provide emergency department services in Springfield, Cottage Grove and Florence. It’s at the center of EEP’s lawsuit in federal court, a case in which McGovern has been called to testify later this month.

“I feel a lack of leadership because of their unwillingness to reconsider,” Kyle said. 

Dr. Charlotte Yeomans, a physician at PeaceHealth Hospital Medicine who cares for patients once they are admitted, also questions higher leadership’s stance — both regarding the transition and McGovern’s tenure. Yeomans spoke on behalf of her union, Northwest Medicine United, not her employer, PeaceHealth. 

“I’m going to make the observation that administrators don’t last in mid-level positions like this unless their behavior is acceptable to those who hire and fire, which is the head system c-suite,” Yeomans said. 

McGovern joined PeaceHealth in 2019, as vice president of medical affairs for the Oregon Network. He was promoted to chief medical officer in 2021 and again to chief hospital executive in 2024, after the closure of Eugene’s University District emergency department. 

“In light of everything that’s going on at EEP, from our perspective on the medical staff, we in hospital medicine absolutely saw and experienced a lot of this behavior,” Yeomans said. 

‘I’m fairly heartless’ 

In a 2021 email given to Lookout-Eugene Springfield, a doctor in the Hospital Medicine department raised concerns about the care of an elderly patient who was dying from kidney failure and then had a heart attack. The patient’s wife had dementia and could no longer care for him.

A physician, who asked not to be named, described efforts to provide a dignified death for the patient but said the person did not qualify for inpatient hospice despite what the physician believed were end-of-life conditions.

“Passed away this afternoon,” the doctor wrote to McGovern. “I’m not sure what happened on this one, but I’m sure the answer will likely be people were all too busy to do their jobs well and the family suffered for it.” 

McGovern responded the next day, arguing the patient’s family had “refused to continue to care at home” and suggesting the patient should have been discharged. He said the hospital could have considered “lettering” the family — a formal notice stating the patient no longer meets criteria to remain hospitalized and may be billed if they stay.

“I’m fairly heartless but I would have considered lettering them for refusal to take the patient home,” he wrote. 

In such cases, physicians may share details like this with an executive to seek review of available resources or staffing support that could help in the future — a conversation that falls within the scope of an administrative medical license. 

“The assessment always seems to focus on how soon we can get the patient out of the hospital.”

Dr. Charlotte Yeomans

Yeomans said that in her department, McGovern generated lists tracking patients’ length of stay and pressed for specific outcomes. And because he did not hold an active clinical license, she said, he often worked through physicians who did. 

“There is rarely a thoughtful and insightful answer, and it usually degrades into pressure, intimidation, and this pattern of shifting blame,” said Yeomans, referring to what she described as responses that deflected concerns about resource constraints — such as bed shortages — and instead placed responsibility on physicians.

“Jim likes to do quick and superficial assessments,” she said. “The assessment always seems to focus on how soon we can get the patient out of the hospital, or is there a way to not admit them in the first place.” 

According to physicians and records, McGovern’s focus on the Hospital Medicine department stopped in 2021, then started in the emergency department in 2022. 

Conversations never opened

Matters came to a head for Jacobs during a 2024 shift at RiverBend, when two people arrived at the same time, both with life-threatening injuries. They needed chest tubes, CPR and other hands-on care.

There were not enough hands.

After one of the patients died, Jacobs filed an incident report with PeaceHealth, flagging what she described as an unsafe situation with too few nurses and technicians racing against the clock. 

She said McGovern wrote an email in response to her report, “We will never have staff sitting around waiting for multiple traumas to come in.” 

“I didn’t feel supported,” Jacobs told Lookout Eugene-Springfield, who went on to describe his feedback as “demoralizing.”  

Jacobs said the response was troubling because she formally raised concerns about risks to patient safety because of limited staffing, including shortages of nurses and technicians. The reply, she said, did not address what she viewed as the root of the issue. 

“I thought a lot about how this situation could have been improved … the financial constraints and nursing constraints, and what are things that we can do to make this better? But I didn’t feel like the conversation was opened,” she said. 

For Jacobs, practicing emergency medicine is heavy enough as it is. But as she made breakfast before her Wednesday, April 15, shift, she told Lookout Eugene-Springfield she felt a little lighter with McGovern on leave.

“People felt ignored,” she said. “So feeling heard and seeing action taken does give a little bit of hope.”