Community rallies for Eugene Emergency Physicians

Presenter: The community rallied in support of Eugene Emergency Physicians March 12, and KEPW’s Curtis Blankinship was there. Here’s his interview with protester Kathryn Lucktenberg: 

Kathryn Lucktenberg: My name is Kathryn Lucktenberg and I don’t know anyone my age and around it who hasn’t needed an emergency room at some point.

And so for PeaceHealth to be letting go of the people who have taken care of us, who are in our community— I mean, what happens when there’s a fire? What happens when the big quake hits? What happens when there’s another shooting?

Because I don’t believe that ApolloMD can bring doctors from across the country in to help us in time, and that’s what our own doctors have been doing.

But the other thing that’s just astonishing is how much money we’re spending on the the war in Iran. I read a statistic that said in the past six days, we’ve spent over $11 billion. And so that’s pretty close to $2 billion a day. And what we could do with that kind of funding—it’s very frustrating.

Curtis Blankinship: Why are they bringing people from outside? Aren’t there enough doctors? I know you don’t, you can’t answer this, but aren’t there enough doctors in Eugene? 

Kathryn Lucktenberg: There are enough doctors and the answers that (PeaceHealth executives) Jim McGovern and Kim Ruscher have been putting out there, to me is just a word salad. There’s no substance to it.

Now my understanding is that outside entities can be used to do bookkeeping, accounting, and EEP is even, I think I’ve heard that they were even, they don’t have a problem with that, per se.

It’s that PeaceHealth has decided that this outside entity will take the place of our physicians. And that’s not what this type of entity is supposed to be doing. And when they start to make decisions about how many minutes now a physician can spend with a patient, that’s not their purview.

Curtis Blankinship: So even if these doctors are trained in that style of care, of quick care, it’s still not better care. (No.) And we would do better off with local. 

Kathryn Lucktenberg: Yes, we would be better off with local, no question. 

Curtis Blankinship: I mean, maybe that, for instance, maybe that’s their justification is that they’re trained to do it in a certain way, but— 

Kathryn Lucktenberg: Well, we don’t know why PeaceHealth has done this. I mean, I’m a civilian so I can’t speak for any of the physicians, but I do have a close relative and I have had to spend time in the emergency department and spent hours there.

One of the things that’s unclear to me. I’d like to know if Peace Health, which says this move will cut down on wait time—How does that square, when we are not talking about increasing the number of beds? I haven’t heard anything about increasing the number of physicians and the nurses.

I mean, everybody’s just flattened. And to then blame the physicians for this type of thing is just unconscionable. 

I don’t know how they could make a physician work harder and faster than they already do without compromising the care.

Curtis Blankinship: All right. Anything else?

Kathryn Lucktenberg: Just thank you for the support. This is a good turnout and I hope— 

Curtis Blankinship: What should people do? What do you think? You’re out here, you’re out here standing on a street corner. 

Kathryn Lucktenberg: Yep. well, as a single human who doesn’t have anything else I can do, I just stand on a street corner and wave and clap.

But I believe that we should be contacting our elected representatives. I know that the one move that the legislature—and you should definitely talk to Sen. (James) Manning. He’s amazing.

But I went to the meeting in Salem most recently where EEP made a presentation to a select committee on this problem. And it sounded to me like their best strategy (that being our legislature right now) is to slow-walk ApolloMD, because there’s a—I don’t see how they cannot be at cross-purposes to our recently passed Senate Bill 951, and that’s the one that’s supposed to protect us from this sort of corporate takeover.

Curtis Blankinship: Maybe the legislature will get their act together here. 

Kathryn Lucktenberg: Well, maybe they’ll be able to stop this particular ApolloMD, but honestly, I don’t know what’s to keep PeaceHealth from then turning around and finding someone else, right? 

So the problem is still there. It’s just a question of what can we do immediately in the short term, and then the long term, we’ve got to get UD (University District) back open, or we’ve got to increase the bed space, and working conditions for our physicians and medical caregivers so that those of us who need care are not going to die, right there in the waiting room. 

Presenter: KEPW’s Curtis Blankinship reports live from the March 12 rally, ‘Save Our ER Docs.’ 

You can hear Curtis on his program ‘Talk Is Cheap’ every Saturday at 4 right here on KEPW 97 point 3, Eugene PeaceWorks Community Radio.