Samaritan Health Services announced Wednesday, Aug. 27, that it will continue to offer maternity care for women and children at all five of its hospitals, including Samaritan Lebanon Community Hospital.
The organization said that it is “updating the proposal,” which originally included consolidating women’s and children’s services, obstetrics, general surgery, orthopedics and urology within the five hospitals, most likely moving the Lebanon birthing center services to Albany. Samaritan had also considered closing services at Samaritan North Lincoln Hospital in Lincoln City.
Medical staff and patients hold a rally along Highway 20 outside Samaritan Lebanon Community Hospital on July 23.
— File Photo
Nurses and other Samaritan medical personnel protested the proposed cuts in Corvallis and Lebanon multiple times in the spring and this summer.
The Oregon Nurses Association said in a statement: “From the beginning, nurses and families made it clear these birthplaces are irreplaceable and must be saved. Generations of families got their start here, and generations fought together to make sure future families have access to safe, local healthcare.
“This is a victory for our entire community – especially our patients. We are deeply grateful to everyone who wrote letters, signed petitions, attended rallies and marched with us. Your voices made the difference.
“Healthcare providers, patients, and community leaders stood united and ultimately Samaritan listened.”
According to ONA, supporters sent more than 21,000 emails to Samaritan executives and board members asking them to save local birth centers and the emergency surgery team.
The proposal to cut services at Samaritan’s outlying hospitals was due to a shortage of clinicians and to financial shortfalls, Marty Cahill, Samaritan’s president and chief executive officer, told The New Era earlier this summer. He said then that the number of medical and nursing students being produced in schools is insufficient to meet the need for new clinicians.
Also, according to a 2024 report by the Hospital Association of Oregon, as a whole, Oregon hospital are seeing increased emergency room visits and between 2022 and 2024 lost $152 million on patient care. Those losses are due to lagging operating margins (the difference between the cost of providing services and payment for those services), rising costs and a “complex and costly” regulatory environment by the state and federal governments. According to the report, Medicaid, the largest insurer in the state, paid hospitals 56 cents for every dollar spent caring for its members and Medicare, which provides coverage for senior citizens, paid 82 cents on the dollar.
Samaritan’s revised proposal comes “after more than 70 listening sessions with staff, clinicians and leaders across the system, and they directly reflect the ideas shared during those conversations,” the organization said in a statement.
“Our teams and communities have been clear that they want to sustain essential services close to home, while finding new ways to collaborate and strengthen our financial sustainability,” said Marty Cahill, Samaritan’s president and chief executive officer. “We are proud of how people across Samaritan have worked together to bring forward solutions that protect access to care while also making our system stronger for the future.”
Samaritan stated that after considering the feedback and “ongoing analysis and refinement of all aspects of the proposed changes,” it has decided to move forward with the following modified proposal for Women and Children’s services:
- Continue delivering babies at all five Samaritan hospitals
- Establish a coordinated, systemwide OB/GYN practice to improve collaboration so that care is provided seamlessly across Samaritan hospitals.
- Continue developing creative solutions — such as cross-training staff and partnering with community resources — to support safe and sustainable care and reduce the use of temporary agency providers.
- Regularly review progress toward sustainability, with a full reassessment in the summer/fall of 2026 to ensure services remain viable and responsive to community needs.
“Our care teams are committed to driving innovative change to sustain delivery sites across the system,” said Dr. Lesley Ogden, chief executive officer of Samaritan’s coastal hospitals in Newport and Lincoln City. Cuts similar to Lebanon’s were being considered for those facilities.
“Though these innovations may not get us to 100% of the estimated financial benefit of the previous proposals, we are hoping the changes will make enough of a difference to make these services viable in each of our communities.”
Samaritan will evaluate the effectiveness of these measures over time.
“We anticipate significant positive impact – in large part because of how Samaritans across the system are collaborating and working together,” said Sy Johnson, chief executive officer of Samaritan’s valley hospitals.
In addition to directly impacting the financial sustainability of delivering care in our three-county service area, all of the clinical program proposals are also expected to deliver benefits for clinician recruitment and retention, patient access and quality measures.
To learn more about the clinical programs being explored by Samaritan, visit samhealth.org/SustainableHealthCare.