PeaceHealth is replacing a local physician group with a national staffing firm to run its emergency departments.
Nurses, doctors, and lawmakers rallied in support of the local physician group, Eugene Emergency Physicians.
Critics of the change are concerned about the quality of care and potential violations of state law.
Nurses, medical staff and community supporters showed up in droves outside of PeaceHealth Sacred Heart Medical Center at RiverBend in Springfield March 12 to show their support for Eugene Emergency Physicians at a rally hosted by the Oregon Nurses Association.
After 35 years of staffing emergency departments in Lane County, PeaceHealth is replacing local physician group EEP with doctors brought in by Georgia-based ApolloMD under the LLC Lane Emergency Physicians.
Here’s what attendees at the rally had to say about the situation.
Eugene Emergency Physicians share fight to maintain contract
Dr. Jonas Pologe and Dr. Gianina Best are emergency medicine physicians working for EEP. Between the emphatic honking of horns from cars passing by the rally, they shared their thoughts on the contract change and how it impacts the community.
Pologe said EEP doctors attended the rally to show their immense care for the community they live in and serve, and to emphasize their belief that PeaceHealth is making a mistake by bringing in another emergency medicine staffing group.
“This is a trend that’s happening across the country. Small, democratic emergency medicine groups that are deeply rooted in their communities are being taken over by large corporate staffing firms,” Pologe said. “Often, these kinds of transitions happen quietly. This one is not happening quietly.”
He said EEP doctors want to stay in the community and to continue partnering with PeaceHealth. State lawmakers have raised concerns that the contract change may not comply with Oregon laws restricting the corporate practice of medicine, and Pologe said skirting the law may be possible if ApolloMD is allowed to take over EEP’s contract.
“If this transition happens and it goes unscrutinized and unchallenged, that essentially means that this law has no teeth at all. That means that all a corporate medicine group needs to do is set up an Oregon LLC registered to an address somewhere else, in this case Atlanta, and have it be owned by one doctor that doesn’t necessarily live here and as of now, doesn’t have an Oregon license,” Pologe said. “That’s a really unfortunate situation if that’s all that it takes to bypass this law.”
Best said she cares deeply about EEP and members treat each other like family. She said the show of support EEP has received from the community brings her to tears. This contract change is another challenge EEP has encountered on top of a global pandemic and the closing of Eugene’s University District hospital, she said. EEP rallies around one another when tragedy strikes both in the community and in their personal lives, and the dedication EEP shows to each other and the community is “100% worth this fight,
Community rallies against hospital contract change
