The University District Hospital sits on Hilyard St. in Eugene, Ore. PeaceHealth announced, on Aug. 22, 2023, that the University District hospital has begun the process of shutting down. The emergency department, inpatient rehabilitation, and other medical services plan to be transferred to the RiverBend Hospital in Springfield, Ore. (Molly McPherson/Emerald)
PeaceHealth hospital administration announced on October 10 that it would be moving its main urgent care clinic from West Eugene to University District Campus, at the site of the current hospital. The news comes in light of the August 22 announcement that PeaceHealth would be closing its emergency department, inpatient rehabilitation, and other related medical services at the University District hospital, Eugene’s only hospital.
The decision to move the urgent care clinic to a more centrally located part of Eugene came after two months of backlash from the local community following the announcement of the hospital closure; leaving the nearest hospital a 15 minute ambulance ride up Interstate 5 to PeaceHealth’s Riverbend hospital in Springfield.
“I think it unfair that they are closing the only hospital in Eugene and replacing it with urgent care without consulting the general public,” said a University of Oregon freshman who did not wish to be identified. “Hospitals are a community matter, the transition to an urgent care clinic should be up to the people, not private healthcare companies.”
On Friday October 13, residents and hospital staff expressed their anger over the hospital closure, throwing a “Die-In” Protest, where protestors laid on the sidewalk for 15 minutes pretending to be dead. The idea of the “Die-In” was to help people visualize the amount of people who could possibly die without a local hospital and the 15 minutes representing the amount of time it would take to travel to RiverBend hospital.
PeaceHealth shared that its Eugene Hospital location has been losing nearly 24 million dollars a year, citing the profit loss as its primary reason for the closure. Further, PeaceHealth named the hospital location as “underutilized” and “unsustainable.”
The hospital also cited that nearly one-third of patients who travel through the Emergency Department are not in need of routine medical-care but rather in need of services from the new Lane County Crisis Stabilization Center that is planned to open by 2025.
In the October 10 announcement, Dr. James McGovern, interim Chief Executive and Chief Medical officer for PeaceHealth Oregon, explained the decision to move the urgent care clinic.
“[An] issue discussed was walk-in and same day care options for patients downtown and near the University of Oregon campus who do not have access to a vehicle,” McGovern said. “Moving the urgent care clinic to a more central Eugene location helps us better serve those patients and many others.”
The urgent care clinic’s move to the District Campus neighborhood is slated for December 2023 after minor renovations are completed in the ground floor of the location. In the meantime, PeaceHealth is discussing possible plans for alternate “clinic-options” for the West Eugene neighborhood.
“Urgent care won’t be able to provide the same care as a hospital would be able to. There are serious medical emergencies that people find themselves in that are outside urgent care’s capabilities, [emergencies] that require an actual hospital nearby,” University of Oregon freshman Eero Lee said, “this pathetic attempt to fill the void of an actual hospital is absolutely unacceptable.”
If the hospital closes as planned, the Emergency Department is scheduled to phase out its services through the month of November while the 27 inpatient rehabilitation units will relocate to their RiverBend location beginning in early 2024.
