For decades, PeaceHealth Oregon has contracted with the local group, Eugene Emergency Physicians, to staff its emergency departments. Come June, that contract will not be renewed. Instead, the hospital system has chosen Atlanta-based ApolloMD as its emergency medicine partner in Springfield, Florence and Cottage Grove.
The decision has left many hospital nurses and physicians concerned about patient care.
Dr. Dave Schwartz is a hospitalist at PeaceHealth Sacred Heart Medical Center at RiverBend. A hospitalist is a physician who works solely within the walls of the hospital. He said he works regularly with ED doctors and has grown to like and trust them in the 13 years he’s been on staff.
Back in 2014, PeaceHealth tried but failed to outsource hospitalist jobs like his. Now, he argues, hospital administration is using the same playbook to try to replace the local emergency docs.
“Eugene Emergency Physicians is a consistent group. They’ve been here for 35 years. They’re invested here,” Schwarz said. “What happens with these third-party groups –all these companies care about is numbers and money. If you see 10 patients a day, they say you need to see 15. If you see 15, they say you need to see 20. So, a lot of the docs here don’t want to work for them because they want to practice medicine, not accounting.”
In an email to medical staff and caregivers on Wednesday, PeaceHealth officials said they are “confident the new partnership is the right fit for the future in their emergency departments.”
Schwartz said he’s speaking up about the decision now because most of the ER physicians can’t-- due to non-disclosure agreements. He said the role of the ED physician is to triage patients and determine if they need to be admitted. That’s when hospitalists rub elbows with emergency docs.
“I’ve talked to several of those docs who are so unhappy right now,” he said.
The plan to terminate the long-standing emergency physician group and replace them with a lower-cost, corporate staffing model prompted a letter on Nov. 19, 2025, from the Pacific Northwest Hospital Medicine Association, a chapter of Northwest Medicine United.
Signed by 60 PeaceHealth hospitalists and nurses, the letter voiced strong support of Eugene Emergency Physicians and urged the hospital system to renew the contract with EEP to provide emergency medical services in all three of the hospital ERs.
Schwartz signed the letter and restated the hospitalists’ strong reliance on the current, local emergency medicine colleagues who are skilled and caring.
“I want to ask patients: Do you want to have a doctor in hospital who cares about you and cares about the community—someone who is going to be accountable to you? Somebody who’s going to see you in the grocery store?” Schwartz asked. “Or do you want to be seen by someone who is basically a body that they found to fill a position-- who doesn’t care about you and doesn’t understand the unique needs of this community?”
KLCC has reached out to PeaceHealth and will have the hospital administration’s response to questions about the emergency medicine contract decisions.
