Local health care leaders to answer your questions Sept. 26

The hospital closed, there’s a shortage of primary care physicians, and patients wait months for an appointment. What’s happening to health care in Eugene? A panel of health care leaders will answer your questions Sept. 26 at the Willamette Christian Center. It’s sponsored by the Churchill Area Neighbors.

[00:00:20] Jensina Hawkins (Churchill Area Neighbors): As everyone knows, we lost our hospital in Eugene. Now admittedly, it’s not like we had a fully functioning ER. But it was still a hospital. It had some beds available for care. And it was a resource that we had. With PeaceHealth closing that location, now we have nothing on our side of the river for emergent care.

[00:00:40] In addition to that, the crisis we’re facing right now has been exacerbated specifically by Oregon Medical Group being purchased by Optum and the mass exodus of providers there, having all of the turnover there with a lot of the providers leaving town and hundreds, if not thousands of patients in the Eugene area, being stuck without a primary care provider now. It’s really reached a crisis.

[00:01:04] You wouldn’t think of Eugene as the second largest city in Oregon of being a health care desert, but it’s getting to that point now where folks are having to wait months to get an appointment with just a primary care provider, let alone to try to get in to see a specialist for any sort of emergent acute issues.

[00:01:25] Carolyn Craig (Churchill Area Neighbors): While there is a lot going on in the community to try to address our health care-related needs and issues, I think a lot of folks in the community don’t know what’s going on, or they don’t understand what they hear about what’s going on.

[00:01:43] And so it’s apparent to me that this forum is really filling a critical need—in terms of being a space where citizens can come and hear from those that are directly involved in addressing these health care issues. So I’m really excited about that. And I think it’s going to be a really great public service and I really hope folks will come.

[00:02:05] Jensina Hawkins (Churchill Area Neighbors): And to Carolyn’s point, a lot of the information seems invisible, honestly. We all know that we have a problem, but we don’t know where the resources are to fix it or who are the ones who can fix it. Folks like to say, ‘Well, it’s the city of Eugene,’ ‘Obviously it’s Lane County,’ and ‘Well, it’s PeaceHealth,’ ‘Well, it’s Optum,’ ‘Well,’ it’s this and that and the other, and everybody points a lot of fingers at each other, and so hopefully by bringing them all together on one panel, we can figure out where they overlap, how they intersect, where they cooperate.

[00:02:34] Carolyn Craig (Churchill Area Neighbors): That’s excellent, Jensina. And we’re hoping the other thing this forum will do is provide perhaps some direction to folks that do want to get involved, in whatever way they might be able to be most effective in addressing some of these issues. So we’re going to be looking for some information along those lines from the panelists.

[00:02:52] John Q: Eugene City Councilor Randy Groves suggested the forum.

[00:02:58] Jensina Hawkins (Churchill Area Neighbors): Churchill Area Neighbors is in Ward 8 and our city councilor is very attentive, very responsive, and engaged with the neighborhood activities. He comes to most of our meetings. And so he actually approached the board of Churchill Area Neighbors and asked if we would be interested in setting up a forum for the community to speak to the folks who actually have some power, have some recognition and visibility.

[00:03:23] And it sounded like a great idea. And we took it and we ran with it. And so, he suggested people like Rep. (Nancy) Nathanson, and then getting Speaker (of the Oregon House of Representatives, Julie) Fahey was another recommendation from Councilor Groves.

[00:03:38] And then I reached out to Miss Deleesa (Meashintubby of Volunteers in Medicine), just because Miss Deleesa knows everybody in town and because she’s one of the most fantastic human beings in the world. Asked her if she would be willing to be on the panel, and I know she’s on the board of PeaceHealth and I asked if she was able to represent PeaceHealth and she said, ‘Well, actually, what about if we get you Dr. (James) McGovern with PeaceHealth?’ And so she facilitated an introduction there and he personally replied almost immediately, accepting, saying he would be honored to participate in this.

[00:04:06] And then Carolyn (Craig) was able to get us in touch with Dr. (Philip) Capp (executive medical director for Oregon) over at Optum. And he responded that he would be honored to participate. And so, yes, he’s on our list now as well.

[00:04:18] Dr. (Nicholas) Jones is in our neighborhood association, and he’s also very engaged with the neighborhood meetings as well. He comes and participates and represents and so and especially because of the unique care that he provides with that direct primary care model as sort of an alternative to what we’re all used to having to wade through when we go to the doctor’s office.

[00:04:39] I had talked with a couple of the county commissioners, and I had mentioned the health care forum to them, and they expressed their interest and their support of it, and they said, you know, ‘You really need to get Eve Gray.’ And I reached out to her and she was another almost immediate acceptance and she has mentioned since then that she’s very much looking forward to being a part of that. As the Director of Health and Human Services for Lane County, and then also being over the community health centers of Lane County, they actually have the largest patient body in the county because they serve over 30,000 individuals.

[00:05:11] Dr. Jeanne Savage from Trillium. She’s the chief medical officer. I had originally reached out to their community outreach folks, and I asked specifically for someone who has ties here in Eugene. And so Dr. Savage is a Duck. She’s from Oregon, here in Eugene, has very deep roots in Eugene.

[00:05:30] John Q: Most of the forum will be dedicated to answering your questions.

[00:05:35] Jensina Hawkins (Churchill Area Neighbors): We’re anticipating a town hall Q&A (Question and Answer) forum. We have a two-hour program planned out. The first 20-30 minutes or so, of course, for introductions. We’ll let the speakers have about two to three minutes each to express their stance on the issues at hand, and then 75 minutes for Q&A.

[00:05:52] And hopefully we’ll have the majority of those questions provided to us beforehand (CANHealthcareForum@Gmail.com), but we will also have team members who will be bringing me questions there on the stage. And so we can address as many of them as possible and then a few minutes for closing statements and wrapup.

[00:06:12] Of course, it’s free. Admission is entirely free. We’ve been very blessed to have folks reach out to us with offers of sponsorship, which we are happy to accept. We are renting out the Willamette Christian Center, and I would love to be able to provide refreshments; we’re hoping to find some funds to get signage—to be able to put up some signs around the area, as well as printing the flyers and printing programs for the evening itself.

[00:06:52] There’s a couple of bus stops right there at Willamette Christian Center. So transportation is accessible. And the parking, they have a brand-new very large parking lot. So we’ve tried to make this event as accessible as possible to our community.

[00:06:52] John Q: Here’s your chance to ask local leaders about the future of health care in Eugene. Doors open at 6 p.m. Sept. 26 for the health care forum. Email your questions in advance to: CANHealthcareForum@gmail.com.