Dr. Charlotte Ransom spent 18 years in scrubs on the emergency department floors at PeaceHealth. Many of her shifts were at the health system’s University District hospital — Eugene’s only emergency department until it closed in 2023.
Before it shuttered, Ransom and her colleagues with Eugene Emergency Physicians, the local group contracted to staff the department, asked leaders to delay the move. They asked for changes they believed would make the emergency department at PeaceHealth Sacred Heart Medical Center RiverBend safer for patients.
The boxy design of the RiverBend emergency department at PeaceHealth’s Springfield hospital — five parallel hallways with rooms between them — offered far less line of sight than the University District’s circular layout, where staff could see across much of the department at a glance.
It’s a less effective design that slows down emergency workers, said Ransom, who worried that issues with RiverBend’s emergency department would only worsen with an increased patient load…