Opinion: The proposed plan of opening an urgent care in the University District is not enough to serve the needs of our community –– and may lead to catastrophic consequences
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PeaceHealth had initially made the decision to close down its University District hospital in late August. It cited seismic code violations and the empty beds within the hospital due to bleeding costs. Due to massive community pushback, the Eugene City Council pressured Gov. Tina Kotek to sign an executive order requesting the hospital to stay open for nine more months. PeaceHealth has denied that request and will continue to close in December.
 Although PeaceHealth has decided to open an urgent care in the University District to replace the hospital, community members, nurses and emergency workers are worried that it won’t match the community’s needs. With the current plan of the hospital closing this December, it is also notable that the proposed urgent care construction hasn’t begun.
The Oregon Nurses Association organized a “die-in” protest to demonstrate to PeaceHealth the number of lives that would be lost from this decision. 150 community members had joined the ONA nurses in solidarity, hoping to keep PeaceHealth open. During this protest, many nurses and other community organizations had a chance to talk to community members directly about the number of lives lost from this decision.
Chris Rompala, RN, was one of the nurses who had talked about the direct impact this would have on Eugene’s worsening mental health crisis. He explained how there were many problems with replacing different complex wings of a hospital with generalized urgent care, one of them being the lack of secure rooms for mental health emergencies. The University District hospital was one of the only facilities within the greater Eugene metropolitan area that had secure rooms, and with two of the most at-risk communities located in the surrounding area –– houseless people and university students –– closing this facility would directly impact these communities.
“I was talking to a chaplain about the detriments of closing the ED [emergency department] here actually, and their response was that they were going to have to start looking at trees because the death rate is going to go through the roof because people aren’t going to be able to get the services they need,” Rompala said.
Eugene is the second largest city in Oregon and, without a centralized hospital system, essential services will be lost. Urgent care also tends to be more generalized and oftentimes generalized care facilities don’t have all the equipment that emergency rooms have. Rompala also said people may have to go to three different urgent cares just to find access to an x-ray, which all emergency rooms require.
Chelsea Hanno-Torres, BSN and RN, said closing different essential services, such as hospice care, will not be reinstated within the area. Often the nearest places for these specialized fields are in Portland, which averages a two-and-a-half-hour drive from Eugene.
“It’s a community with a need and the needs are not being met,” Hanno-Torres said.
Another nurse, Allison Hyder, BSN and RN, said that without traffic there would be a 15-minute drive from the university district to the nearest emergency room. Each minute can exacerbate damage for critical health problems such as strokes and heart conditions. A minute can determine whether or not someone will lose the ability to talk again.
“Here to Springfield is life and death,” Hyder said.
Eugene also has one of the highest homeless members per capita in the nation, and many of those people can’t afford to get to urgent care that isn’t accessible within the community.
Unanimously, nurses and trained medical professionals believe that closing this hospital would lead to lives being lost in the Eugene community and that PeaceHealth is choosing profit over patient-centered care. Hyder says that this decision was “all about the money, not about the community,” and will lead to a devastating impact.
One of the closing speakers of the protest, Sen. James Manning, recalled a billboard that PeaceHealth had put up that said “we see you,” to which Sen. Manning retorted, “PeaceHealth, do you see us?” Sen. Manning urged his colleagues in Salem to stand with him to urge PeaceHealth to continue operations in the University District.
From the nurses to the community members, PeaceHealth does not see the needs of this community if they choose to close the hospital down in December. We will lose lives to the lack of essential care provided and this community will be hurt.