PeaceHealth to Launch Public ER Dashboards Showing Wait Times, Mortality Data

PeaceHealth Oregon Chief Hospital Executive Jim McGovern rejected Governor Tina Kotek's request to pause the hospital system's emergency department staffing overhaul, telling the governor in a letter that delaying the transition would endanger patients — and announcing plans to publish public dashboards tracking ER wait times, mortality, and physician recruitment as proof the changeover is safe.

Kotek wrote to McGovern on Tuesday, March 17, asking PeaceHealth to delay the transition by 180 days beyond the planned July 1 start date. In her letter, Kotek wrote that she had "requested a review of all options available to me to ensure adequate staffing of ED services in the region," urging PeaceHealth to "reconsider the rushed nature of this significant contract change."

The dispute centers on PeaceHealth's decision to end its 35-year contract with Eugene Emergency Physicians and replace the local group with Atlanta-based ApolloMD to staff ERs in Springfield, Florence, and Cottage Grove. PeaceHealth said it plans to move forward with implementation timelines of June 1 at Sacred Heart Medical Center at RiverBend and July 1 at Cottage Grove Community Medical Center and Peace Harbor Medical Center.

In his March 20 letter to the governor, McGovern pushed back on the framing that the process was hasty. McGovern defended the process to pick ApolloMD, which started in November 2025, calling it a "structured and rigorous process," and wrote: "I want to be clear that this decision and the implementation timeline are not rushed." At the same time, he acknowledged a failure in communication. McGovern acknowledged a need to rebuild community trust, writing: "As I recently shared internally with our caregivers, I should have communicated more clearly about the rationale for this change, the criteria used to select a new partner and what the decision would mean for the day-to-day operations of our hospitals."

On the safety question, McGovern turned the governor's concern back around. The letter stated that "introducing a delay at this stage would create meaningful patient safety risk by undermining the stability and certainty required to safely operate emergency departments," adding that "reliable transition dates are essential to workforce planning, physician recruitment and clinical readiness." McGovern wrote that "the most effective way to address that concern is not delay, but transparency paired with accountability," arguing that "maintaining the transition timeline while openly measuring and reporting readiness metrics provides stronger protection for patients than postponement."

As part of that transparency commitment, PeaceHealth proposed publishing "community-facing transition dashboards" that show emergency department details such as mortality, diversion, "door to doctor" times, and recruitment statistics.

The staffing dispute has drawn opposition well beyond the governor's office. More than 150 healthcare workers, elected officials, and community members rallied in front of RiverBend Medical Center in Springfield to oppose PeaceHealth's plan to outsource its local ER doctors. Eugene Emergency Physicians sued PeaceHealth and ApolloMD, alleging that their business model violates the Oregon law that regulates the corporate practice of medicine, with the filing in Lane County Circuit Court marking the latest development in nearly six weeks of fallout between the two organizations.

ApolloMD recently created a new entity, Lane Emergency Physicians, LLC, to staff PeaceHealth's local emergency departments; the Atlanta-based company is not currently operating in Oregon and has drawn scrutiny from lawmakers and state regulators. Eight state legislators, including House Speaker Julie Fahey, Sen. Floyd Prozanski, and Sen. James Manning, sent a letter to McGovern and ApolloMD CEO Yogin Patel asking the hospital system and the contractor to submit transaction details to the Oregon Health Authority's Health Care Market Oversight program, which reviews health care deals for public transparency and community impact.

All 41 EEP providers have signed an agreement refusing to work for ApolloMD after June 30 — leaving a narrow window for McGovern's promise of transparency dashboards to replace a community's hard-won trust in the doctors who have staffed its emergency rooms for more than three decades.