Nurses, patients and community members plan to hold a public rally outside the Samaritan Health Plan Building ahead of Samaritan Health Services’ scheduled board of directors meeting Wednesday afternoon, May 21.
Nurses and community allies are rallying to save the birth centers at Samaritan Lebanon Community Hospital and Samaritan North Lincoln Hospital and prevent cuts to other local health services.
Samaritan Health Services late last week acknowledged that it is considering cutting various services in an effort to stem losses, despite the fact that Samaritan Lebanon Community Hospital has, individually, finished in the black for the past five years.
Nurses are holding a rally Wednesday, May 21, at the Samaritan Health Plan Building in Corvallis to call on Samaritan’s Board of Directors to keep birth centers and other essential health services open in Lebanon.
— Photo courtesy of Oregon Nurses Association
Responding to social media protests, which included posts on The Buzz in Lebanon, Samaritan CEO Marty Cahill on Thursday issued a statement that didn’t deny the rumors, but stated that Samaritan officials are “broadly re-imagining the system and what serving our community might look like in the future.”
“Our goal is to ensure safe, sustainable delivery of quality health care to our 300,000-person community today and for decades to come,” Cahill wrote.
“As we identify easy to work more collaboratively as a system, those efforts should lead to more sustainable outcomes.
“In early 2025, the following services were identified for initial evaluation in this process: general surgery, orthopedics, women and children’s services, and urology.
“No final decisions have been made. We will evaluate these new approaches deliberately and carefully over the next few months.
“There will be time allocated within the process for additional discussion with our internal and external stakeholders such as staff, board members and the community prior to finalizing any operational changes.”
The Corvallis rally will be held at 1:30 p.m., at 2300 NW Walnut Blvd., prior to the board’s meeting at 2:15 p.m. The public is encouraged to participate, according to a statement from the Oregon Nurses Association.
Following a Samaritan board meeting last week, a petition appeared on Change.org, credited to Michael Stevenson, titled “Keep the Lebanon Birth Center Open.”
An explainer written by Stefanie McDougal, whose Linked-In page identifies her as a registered nurse with Samaritan, stated that Lebanon’s birthing center was among the services being considered for cuts, as well as the hospital’s emergency surgery team.
That could not be confirmed with official sources prior to Lebanon Local’s deadline.
Cahill in April was named to succeed outgoing CEO Doug Boysen on May 19.
He was appointed chief operating officer of Samaritan Lebanon Community Hospital and assumed the role of its CEO in 2015 until becoming COO for Samaritan hospitals in late 2023.
Hospitals across the U.S. are struggling financially due to a wide variety of factors.
A major one is low and delayed reimbursement rates from insurance companies, particulalry Medicare and Medicaid.
Hospitals also have to shoulder increased administrative requirements to manage insurance claims, and they face rising costs for labor, drugs and other supplies.
A big factor is a shortage of workers, which force them to use contract labor and sometimes reduce services.
In addition to Samaritan Lebanon Community Hospital, Samaritan Health also operates the Good Samaritan Regional Medical Center in Corvallis, Samaritan Albany General Hospital, and two on the coast: Samaritan Pacific Community Hospital in Newport and Samaritan North Lincoln Hospital in Lincoln City.
According to figures reported to the Oregon Health Authority, Lebanon is the most profitable of the five, with a profitable operating margin (the profit it makes on a dollar of sales after accounting for the direct costs involved in earning the revenue) of $24,414,294 in 2024. Lebanon’s profit over the last three years has been relatively stable, and it is the only one of the five Samaritan hospitals that has been profitable every year since 2020.
By contrast, Good Samaritan Regional Medical Center reported a $25,123,524 loss in 2024 after finishing with a loss of more than $31 million the year before.
Albany was roughly $7.2 million in the red at the end of 2024; the last year Albany finished in the black was 2020.
North Lincoln has been in the black the last few years – finishing with $334,547 and $268,408 in 2023, and the Newport hospital has finished right behind Lebanon – $14,829,238 in operating margin in 2024 and $22,600,684 in 2023.
Lebanon has averaged roughly 20,500 emergency room visits over the past three years, not far behind Albany (roughly 21,000 per year) and about 25% less than Good Sam (averaging just under 25,400).
According to the Oregon Nurses Association, the closure of birth centers “has become a dangerous trend in the U.S. Despite a rising maternal mortality rate, more than 500 hospitals in the U.S. have closed their labor and delivery departments since 2010. Since 2019, Oregon health systems closed birth centers at hospitals in Redmond, Baker City and Gresham. Following public outcry and state intervention, Legacy was forced to reopen its birth center at Legacy Mount Hood Medical Center in Gresham shortly after closing.”