SPRINGFIELD, Ore. In a recent survey, 97% of patients reported that they were dissatisfied with their experience at PeaceHealth facilities, largely due to excessively long wait times. Some patients say they wait up to 19 hours to be seen.

“We had PeaceHealth Sacred Heart Riverbend, which had 57 beds in the emergency department, and PeaceHealth University Area Emergency Department, which had about 30 beds in the emergency department. We suffered a functional loss when PeaceHealth chose to close the University Area Emergency Department,” said Dr. Charlotte Yeomans of PeaceHealth. “There are no concrete plans to expand its beds,” he said.

With the loss of about 30 beds, Riverbend and McKenzie-Willamette hospitals were forced to fill the gap, Yeomans said.

According to Staff Nurse Chris Rompala, one of the biggest losses comes from secure beds for psychiatric patients.

“I think we had about 12 secure beds in the emergency department at UD, and at Riverbend I think we had about two or three, which is a pretty dramatic reduction in safe rooms for our psychiatric patients,” he said. “That was one of our biggest concerns. It’s led to some interesting situations over the last almost year that we’ve had to learn to deal with, and we’ve just kind of made it work with what we’ve got.”

Although Eugene and Springfield had fewer rooms for patients, there was a massive backlog due to the same number of patients, especially due to a national shortage of nurses.

“I imagine most people have heard that the nursing shortage is going to get worse, and there are many factors to that, including not having enough nursing educators, which PeaceHealth is doing some things to help alleviate.” said Nurse Kevyn Paul. “And that in itself is a big puzzle to solve. But the reality is that there are not enough nurses, and so the work environment needs to be supportive for nurses.”

Despite these concerns, PeaceHealth says things are looking up. The company released a statement about its efforts to improve efficiency following the closure of the University District.

“Overall, we continued to make progress reducing wait times last year, and this month we are on track to see our shortest wait times in the last 12 months,” PeaceHealth said.

PeaceHealth officials also said it opened significantly more beds in Riverbend last year and that access to health care is a complex issue nationwide, but they are trying to solve it locally.