PeaceHealth nurses, patients decry ER waits in Eugene
PeaceHealth patients are facing long emergency room waits, difficulty scheduling appointments and insufficient time with their health care providers, according to an Oregon Nurses Association survey of patients.
PeaceHealth closed the University District emergency room in Eugene on Dec. 1, 2023, with the stated goal of consolidating staff at PeaceHealth Riverbend in Springfield.
On Thursday, the Oregon Nurses Association and Pacific Northwest Hospital Medicine Association released the results from a survey of PeaceHealth patients. They found that 97% of respondents reported a negative experience, with emergency room wait times being the biggest complaint.
Survey findings
The survey asked respondents to select zero to five different “negative experience(s)” they had at a PeaceHealth facility and found:
- 70% experienced long emergency room waits, with several reporting delays of eight hours or more.
- A majority struggled to schedule appointments, with some waiting over six months.
- Half felt they had insufficient time with their provider, attributing it to apparent understaffing.
- One third reported long waits for urgent care services.
- One quarter encountered high or unexpected medical bills.
- 71% said they had a negative experience at Sacred Heart RiverBend.
Differing perspectives on wait times
The workers associated with those unions corroborated the experiences shared in the survey with what they said they’ve seen, particularly around wait times.
“The expectation when University District closed was that all of the staff that were working at University District would be integrated into Riverbend, and that would help to alleviate staffing shortages,” said Rob Sabin, a PeaceHealth ER nurse and member of ONA. “What we saw is dissatisfied nurses quit and we were left worse off than we were before.”
Sabin was one of the nurses who had been transferred from the University District to Riverbend.
“Wait times have increased dramatically,” since UD’s ER closed, he said. “On a daily basis, we see wait times reach in the four-to-six–hour range. I have seen days as high as 14-hour wait times.”
Jim Murez, spokesperson for PeaceHealth, disputed this.
“Wait times at RiverBend did not get longer with the closure of University District,” he said. “90.8% of RiverBend ER patients had a wait time of less than four hours this month.”
Dr. Charlotte Yeomans, a PeaceHealth hospitalist and President of PNHMA, attributed the differing perspectives to how PeaceHealth measures wait times compared to how patients perceive them.
“They only look at the moment between when the patient was registered and the moment a triage nurse talks to them or pulls them into the room, and they call that the wait time,” she said. “But patients themselves consider their wait time the entire time they’re in the lobby.”
Sabin said nurses feel rushed as a result.
“There is a pressure to complete tasks and get people moved, as opposed to making that personal connection that a lot of people need,” he said.
Yeomans added that she saw the impact of these ER wait times in her part of the hospital.
“I have one or two patients every single day that make a point that they’re so thankful for their inpatient care and they really appreciate the excellent care they’re receiving, but they are scared of having to go back to the ER, not because of the care they get once they’re back in the ER, but specifically because of the wait in the lobby,” she said.
Staffing and financial challenges
In the introduction to their survey, the unions outlined changes PeaceHealth had made in the last few years, which they seemed to view as contributing to the negative experiences patients reported, including:
“Every time that an urgent care closes, the volumes in the emergency room appear to go up,” Sabin said.
Murez instead pointed to community-wide health care gaps.
“10,000 people lost primary care coverage when Oregon Medical Group lost providers,” he said. “That’s a lot of people to absorb into the existing primary care community, and it contributes to emergency department wait times as people go to the emergency department for primary care problems.”
Murez also downplayed PeaceHealth’s closures, adding that before the Gateway Urgent Care closed it had been serving as a COVID testing site since late 2022 and that the UD ER closure was accompanied by openings of the UD urgent care clinic and plans for Lane County’s West 11th urgent care.
Proposed solutions
Alongside survey results, ONA and PNHMA outlined what they saw as solutions, including:
- Hiring more frontline staff and offering competitive incentives.
- Incentivizing RiverBend nurses to work in the ER rather than contracting with travel nurses.
- Opening ER rooms earlier in the day and staffing them longer.
- Replacing the ER beds lost in the University District closure.
- Increased staffing at Cottage Grove Community Medical Center.
- Ending and avoiding partnerships with for-profit healthcare providers.
“Our biggest ask is for them to adequately staff ED,” said Kevin Mealy, ONA Communications Manager. “We have provided multiple ideas on how they can do that and thus far they are not willing to entertain any of those.”
Murez said PeaceHealth is “working toward many of the solutions we have heard from the community and our staff.”
“There is a national nursing shortage that makes hiring nurses easier said than done,” Murez said, but PeaceHealth is “constantly monitoring and adjusting staffing” in the ER and Cottage Grove Community Medical Center.
“PeaceHealth is hiring healthcare professionals in all disciplines as fast as we can recruit them,” he said. “This includes launching new and innovative plans to recruit and retain nurses through our Institute for Nursing Excellence along with other efforts to recruit clinicians and other staff; working with local partners to streamline the path toward a career in healthcare; and outreach efforts with schools.”
Alan Torres covers local government for the Register-Guard. He can be reached over email at [email protected] or on X @alanfryetorres.
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