McKenzie-Willamette announces plans for 12-bed satellite emergency department in Eugene

The citywide health care forum serves up a big public announcement. McKenzie-Willamette is planning a 12-bed satellite emergency department in Eugene, at a site passed by 25,000 cars a day.

[00:00:15] Jensina Hawkins (Churchill Area Neighbors): Our fourth question came into the CAN Healthcare Forum email inbox about 20 different times, 20 different ways. So I’m going to give credit to it to the first one who submitted it and I’m going to have a special guest that I have been informed is here in the audience come up and answer it. So this question is from Mary Adams and the question is: Is there a way to bring a hospital or at least an emergency room to Eugene?

[00:00:49] John Q: The special guest was McKenzie-Willamette CEO David Butler.

[00:00:53] David Butler (McKenzie-Willamette CEO): When we heard about University District closing downtown, you know, I understand all the economic reasons. We did some feasibility studies and our team got together and I’ve been at other organizations where we actually had satellite or freestanding EDs.

[00:01:12] So we’ve actually been talking with the Eugene city mayor and city manager. We actually met with the governor of Oregon and got kind of the green light to least move forward with a C.O.N., which is a Certificate of Need application.

[00:01:29] We’ve done a lot of due diligence in the Eugene area and we found a local investor and a local developer that’s willing to help us put this plan together.

[00:01:41] We’re actually in the phase of getting a contract where we would sign the contract and the developer and architects would actually put together a build and design phase for this.

[00:01:53] We’ve looked, combed all over you know West and South Eugene. There’s not a whole lot of available sites, but we think we did find a pretty good site.

[00:02:05] Don’t want to tell you about it because you might go out and buy it. But it’s got great access. Over 25,000 cars go by there every day. And so we’re very close to getting a contract agreement done and signed that we would go into the design and architectural design phase.

[00:02:24] At first, this, you know, it wasn’t public knowledge. It is public knowledge now. So we wanted to share that with you and we’re willing to work with any of you. And initially we’re looking at about a 12-bed satellite ED. It would have the ability to grow and expand based on the site that we’re looking at.

[00:02:46] So we feel that we have two really good hospitals in this community, unfortunately they’re both in Springfield. And even though it doesn’t take you an hour to get across town, it’s still a disadvantage to have to drive all the way over to McKenzie or RiverBend to get health care.

[00:03:06] We know there’s a lot of great urgent care centers and we appreciate that, but this would be a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week freestanding, or what we call a satellite ED, would be on the same license as the hospital.

[00:03:18] Once we get the design and build phase done, we’re probably looking about a two-year or two-and-a-half-year construction time frame.

[00:03:27] We do have a couple of our ED doctors, Dr. (Jonathan) Wright and Dr (Brian) Hoyt. Dr. Hoyt is actually the chief of staff. They run a great emergency room there. We know we work very closely with Jim (McGovern, PeaceHealth) and we know there’s a lot of wait times and we’re doing our best to try to accommodate that.

[00:03:44] We work very closely with Dr. (Philip) Capp (of Optum) and, you know, we see the shortage. We actually, we don’t employ any primary care docs, but we do partner with a lot of groups, a lot of independent groups. So if we can’t own them, then what we’ve done is helped with income guarantees, recruitment, placement, relocation and those type of things.

[00:04:05] So we’re trying to do our part, but we all have to work together as a team on this.

[00:04:12] John Q: McKenzie-Willamette announces plans for a 12-bed satellite emergency department, during the Churchill Area Neighbors citywide forum on health care.

Image courtesy KEPW YouTube channel.