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Day 1251: All riled up
Aug. 23rd, 2023 11:51 pmMy most aggravating local issue has resurfaced. It’s the Eugene hospital situation.
When I was a teen, there were three local hospitals. The biggest was Sacred Heart, which is next to the university and run by the Catholic Church, or rather, by PeaceHealth, which is a Catholic organization. Then there was Eugene Hospital and Clinic downtown (barely a mile west of Sacred Heart), then McKenzie-Willamette, in downtown Springfield. This was fine.
At some point, probably when I was living in the Bay Area, Eugene Hospital closed. The clinic was still going about 15 years ago, then the building was replaced by student apartments. Then PeaceHealth decided it needed to become a regional hospital, so they built a fancy new facility in northern Springfield, called Riverbend. There was much uproar in Eugene, but they kept the emergency department and various other services available at the university site, so we were mostly placated, except that it’s annoying that Eugene parents can’t easily have their babies in Eugene. McKenzie Willamette talked about adding a second hospital in Eugene, but that fell through.
I should note that Eugene has about 200,000 people, and Springfield has about 60,000 people. If you look online it’s more like 177,000 for Eugene, but that’s because the entire Santa Clara neighborhood, which has Eugene addresses, is not within the city limits.
Today’s news is: Sacred Heart is now closing its campus location. This means that anyone having an emergency has to go all the way to Springfield. That’s fine for people living in the northeastern part of Eugene, but it’s going to be a nightmare for those in southwestern Eugene, especially during rush hour, because… there’s a river between about 80% of Eugene and both hospitals. That means going over potentially crowded bridges. And having lived through a major earthquake, I am NOT happy at the prospect of having it become next to impossible to get to a hospital.
I mentioned this to Lucy Vinis, our mayor, the first time she ran for election. She wasn’t concerned about the earthquake potential. She pointed out that most of the doctors live in south Eugene. As if it should reassure me that the doctors can’t get to the hospitals? Somehow they would magically set up facilities for us in our part of town?
The local nurses union is outraged. They pointed out that on Monday, the emergency department wait at Riverbend was 18 hours – and that’s with the university district hospital still open.
I used some of my annoyance-energy to make a map. Here you go. I put a heart on our neighborhood, and an H on the locations of the three hospitals.
Given that access to a hospital is an important public good, why can’t we just have a publicly owned hospital right here in our city, so we wouldn’t have to be at the mercy of the Peacehealth decision-makers?
When I was a teen, there were three local hospitals. The biggest was Sacred Heart, which is next to the university and run by the Catholic Church, or rather, by PeaceHealth, which is a Catholic organization. Then there was Eugene Hospital and Clinic downtown (barely a mile west of Sacred Heart), then McKenzie-Willamette, in downtown Springfield. This was fine.
At some point, probably when I was living in the Bay Area, Eugene Hospital closed. The clinic was still going about 15 years ago, then the building was replaced by student apartments. Then PeaceHealth decided it needed to become a regional hospital, so they built a fancy new facility in northern Springfield, called Riverbend. There was much uproar in Eugene, but they kept the emergency department and various other services available at the university site, so we were mostly placated, except that it’s annoying that Eugene parents can’t easily have their babies in Eugene. McKenzie Willamette talked about adding a second hospital in Eugene, but that fell through.
I should note that Eugene has about 200,000 people, and Springfield has about 60,000 people. If you look online it’s more like 177,000 for Eugene, but that’s because the entire Santa Clara neighborhood, which has Eugene addresses, is not within the city limits.
Today’s news is: Sacred Heart is now closing its campus location. This means that anyone having an emergency has to go all the way to Springfield. That’s fine for people living in the northeastern part of Eugene, but it’s going to be a nightmare for those in southwestern Eugene, especially during rush hour, because… there’s a river between about 80% of Eugene and both hospitals. That means going over potentially crowded bridges. And having lived through a major earthquake, I am NOT happy at the prospect of having it become next to impossible to get to a hospital.
I mentioned this to Lucy Vinis, our mayor, the first time she ran for election. She wasn’t concerned about the earthquake potential. She pointed out that most of the doctors live in south Eugene. As if it should reassure me that the doctors can’t get to the hospitals? Somehow they would magically set up facilities for us in our part of town?
The local nurses union is outraged. They pointed out that on Monday, the emergency department wait at Riverbend was 18 hours – and that’s with the university district hospital still open.
I used some of my annoyance-energy to make a map. Here you go. I put a heart on our neighborhood, and an H on the locations of the three hospitals.
Given that access to a hospital is an important public good, why can’t we just have a publicly owned hospital right here in our city, so we wouldn’t have to be at the mercy of the Peacehealth decision-makers?