Eugene Health Care Coalition joins Churchill, neighborhoods to plan 2nd citywide forum

The Eugene Health Care Coalition joins with Churchill and other neighborhoods in planning a sequel to September’s first citywide health care forum.

Tom Peck (Eugene Health Care Coalition): The organization that I’m in is Eugene Health Care Coalition, which we formed after the closure of the University Health District Hospital, the ED. It was a coalition of Oregon Nurses Association, other unions and organizations, certainly Health Care for All, and individuals like myself who are very concerned.

[00:00:40] So we’ve been meeting since then. We have four neighborhood associations who are meeting and we’ll be at the NLC (Neighborhood Leaders Council) speaking on the 26th. I’m now the liaison to the NLC from Friendly Area Neighborhood. But we’ll be speaking, we’re on the agenda to speak about Eugene Health Care Coalition and what we’re planning.

[00:01:06] Presenter: The second citywide health care forum will build on the success of the first, which was organized by Jensina Hawkins, Sarah Zoll, and the Churchill Area Neighbors.

[00:01:16] Tom Peck  (Eugene Health Care Coalition): Well, Jensina, it was put on by her neighborhood association, and she was the driver of that. She’s an amazing woman. And she’s on our committee and she’s behind the second health care forum.

[00:01:32] And if you can mark in your calendar, March 1, that’s a Saturday. It’ll be kind of like a 2 p.m. affair. If we have the bandwidth, we’re going to turn it into a bit of a health fair.

[00:01:47] Our health care coalition doing a series of these (forums) will get some good recognition and ultimately we would like a seat at the table about the development and the controls of health care in Eugene Lane County and in Oregon. You know, there’s very few private citizens who really have a say, so we kind of just watch from the outside.

[00:02:14] We don’t even have any kind of hospital on the south side of the Willamette River, which puts us at big risk in a variety of ways. If you really have an acute medical emergency, you have a long travel time. If the ambulance is tied up, there’s no ambulances, or if there’s traffic, or if you need to go to the cath lab and the cath lab is in use, you’re delayed and that could cost you your life.

[00:02:47] You have, with many medical emergencies, a golden hour. And if you exceed that, put the person’s life and health at risk.

[00:02:57] If there’s an earthquake right now, if there, if the Cascadian subduction fault moves, there probably would be hundreds or thousands of serious injuries, no medical care.

[00:03:12] Presenter: He explained that he has a personal interest.

[00:03:15] Tom Peck (Eugene Health Care Coalition): I can tell you why I’m such an advocate. I had the big one on Sept. 11 and it was the big, big one—heart attack—out of the blue, you know, no warning, just ‘Boom.’ We call 911 and it was 45 minutes between the call and me in the cath lab getting a stent. And they told me, several people looked me in the face, said, ‘Dude, you are one lucky, lucky guy.’ The stars lined up.

[00:03:48] Presenter: Tom said he owes his life to innovation at the city led by Chief Caven and Chief Heppel. They partnered with local legislators, including Speaker Julie Fahey, Sen. Floyd Prozanski, and Rep. Nancy Nathanson.

[00:04:02] Tom Peck (Eugene Health Care Coalition): It was Nancy Nathanson and all of her partners laying out this new innovation plan, of filling the gap of missing University District. So they’re doing an awesome job. And my feeling is we need to wrap our arms around it, support it.

[00:04:25] Her bill was (HB) 4136. And then she put out an RFP to several medical facilities and profit, nonprofit, and there’s a lot of details, especially like: You call 911, they now have more triage people.

[00:04:44] So if you have a low acuity, don’t need to ride to the emergency room, they pass you off to a nurse and she’ll say, ‘Okay, let me make you an appointment with the county.’ So it’s like that, but they’ve got more ambulances on the street.

[00:05:02] We’re going to get people to the right appropriate care. And people right now are languishing. They don’t have a primary physician. They don’t know where to turn. They don’t have the skills, they stopped taking their meds, and, you know, they get in deep trouble. So this is going to turn it around.

[00:05:23] They have reorganized how they dispatch and they have ambulances staged and they have more of them.

[00:05:32] So, our job, I believe, is to help keep this thing alive. It’ll be years before we get an emergency room.

[00:05:43] We have a responsibility to our community and we’re going to push legislation to curb corporate takeover of the exam room, you know, hospitals, corporate executives are, through rules, really able to determine the health care.

[00:06:00] Corporate medicine, you have 10 minutes per patient. You have a quota of patients per day. And that goes for doctors, which were the main people who bolted and said, ‘We can’t work, we can’t deliver health, and good medicine.’ They are pushing nurses and medical staff to a very dangerous level where they make mistakes because they’re moving so fast, they have so much to do.

[00:06:28] I was told by ONA staff, working in CCU (cardiac care), patients who were post op with a coronary bypass surgery. These are critical patients, as you can imagine, they had their chest popped open. They used to have two patients and now they have four and they’re just, you know, running like crazy, but it’s all about making more profit for the corporation.

[00:06:59] And so, it really has affected how they carry out healthcare.

[00:07:06] Ben Bowman in one of his flyers said that the purchase of health care facilities in the last 10 years has increased 100,000%. So it’s in the billions of dollars every year, especially UnitedHealthcare Group, which is the world’s largest health care insurance company, and they have several subsidiaries.

[00:07:31] One of them is Optum, which has purchased Oregon Medical Group, and it’s working on many other deals and it wants to get a stranglehold on our primary care.

[00:07:46] Presenter: Tom Peck and the Oregon Health Care Coalition organize to give local residents a voice in decisions about health care in Eugene. They’re supporting Churchill Area Neighbors in a second citywide health care forum, coming in 2025.