PeaceHealth Opens Springfield Rehab Hospital With Oregon's First Standalone TBI Unit

Lane County's most catastrophically injured patients have had one realistic option for extended brain injury rehabilitation: leave Oregon. PeaceHealth's new $80 million hospital on International Way in Springfield changes that, while also freeing approximately 31 inpatient beds at RiverBend as its emergency department absorbs a surge that has already delayed scheduled surgeries.

The 67,000-square-foot building, developed through a joint venture with Lifepoint Rehabilitation and situated next to the existing RiverBend Annex, opens as Oregon's first standalone inpatient rehabilitation hospital. PeaceHealth holds majority ownership and Lifepoint, a for-profit national operator that runs comparable facilities in Western Washington, manages day-to-day operations. The target date for transferring current RiverBend rehabilitation patients into the new facility is Oct. 1, 2026.

The capacity math comes directly from PeaceHealth Chief Administrative Officer Alicia Beymer: "Not only will the 27 beds that we have here at RiverBend be absorbed in the new facility, but we'll also add another 15 beds." With the rehab unit vacating RiverBend, those freed beds and the rearranged clinical space are projected to open roughly 31 additional medical slots at the main hospital, directly targeting the boarding backlog that has pushed some surgical patients off the schedule.

The TBI unit carries the most weight for Lane County families. Beymer described the existing reality plainly: "Right now the options for patients who've experienced a traumatic brain injury are oftentimes they'll stay longer in an acute hospital, so at Riverbend after an accident to receive that care, or we may be transferring patients out of our acute hospitals out of state." Those transfers have regularly meant months away from home, with family members often following patients across state lines during the most disorienting stretch of recovery.

Ashley McDonald, CEO of the Springfield Rehabilitation Hospital, tied the opening to a vision first articulated around 2020. "This new hospital, opening in 2026, is not just a building," McDonald said at last August's beam-raising ceremony. "It's a promise to our community that they will have access to award-winning care close to home."

The central tension in that promise is access. Inpatient rehabilitation hospitals operate under stricter federal eligibility thresholds than standard hospital stays, and PeaceHealth and Lifepoint have not publicly addressed how the facility will handle Medicaid patients or how its payer mix will compare to what RiverBend's current rehabilitation unit accepts. When the project received Oregon Health Authority certificate-of-need approval in 2024, SEIU Local 49 flagged concerns about the pairing of a Catholic nonprofit with a for-profit national operator; those staffing and access questions remain publicly unanswered ahead of the Oct. 1 patient transfer target.

The project broke ground in March 2025 after clearing OHA's regulatory process the previous year. For Springfield, it arrives as a workforce signal too: intensive inpatient rehabilitation demands a concentrated clinical mix of occupational therapists, physical therapists, speech pathologists, and specialized rehabilitation nurses that does not currently exist in Lane County in significant numbers, and the hospital's stated ambition to serve as a regional referral center may begin pulling that talent to Springfield well before the unit's first TBI patient walks through the door.