PeaceHealth has refused to meet with home care nurses for a month.

(SPRINGFIELD, Ore.) - PeaceHealth is facing serious allegations about its failure to properly care for local home health and hospice patients during its recent nurses’ strike. Between Feb. 10 - 24, home health and hospice patients and health care workers have reported that:

• Multiple PeaceHealth home care patients had to be readmitted to the hospital due to a lack of proper home wound care by PeaceHealth’s high-priced strike replacement nurses.
• Some patients went without wound care visits for up to 14 days.
• Many patients had appointments canceled and were only seen for 50% of their prescribed visits.
• Missing and bad documentation by PeaceHealth’s strike replacement workers and PeaceHealth managers left it unclear what type of care patients received during visits.
• Four of PeaceHealth’s strike replacement nurses quit in the first few days of the strike because patient acuity was much higher than they had expected.
• A PeaceHealth strike replacement nurse broke down and cried during a patient appointment due to high patient acuity.
• Upon returning, many of the skilled union nurses were locked out of the computers they need to chart and phones required for their work for up to 3 hours delaying the visits they had scheduled with patients.
• No PeaceHealth managers were working the first two days after nurses returned and many were off the following week–making it harder to address missed care, documentation and IT problems.

These unsettling reports of compromised patient care have raised significant concerns about PeaceHealth’s priorities and its ability to care for patients without union nurses. The Oregon Nurses Association (ONA) is calling upon PeaceHealth and health care regulatory agencies to investigate reports of substandard patient care and hold PeaceHealth accountable. 

Local nurses delayed their original strike dates after PeaceHealth appeared unprepared to care for patients. Nurses chose to give PeaceHealth 10 additional days before a strike began to transfer patients to other home care agencies or join nurses at the bargaining table and reach a fair agreement to prevent a strike.

PeaceHealth executives refused to transfer patients and canceled their mediation session with nurses–which could have prevented a strike. PeaceHealth executives had repeatedly assured patients, their families and our community that there would be no disruption to care during the strike. They failed to keep that promise.

Nurses cited their concern for patients and PeaceHealth’s failures to adequately prepare to care for them at the time they chose to delay the strike, saying:  

“Our community’s health and safety is nurses’ no. 1 priority. Frankly, we have no confidence in PeaceHealth executives’ ability to provide safe care for patients by Feb. 1. To best support local patients and their families, we’ve made the difficult decision to change our strike dates to Feb. 10 - 24,” said Jo Turner, an ONA member and hospice nurse at PeaceHealth Sacred Heart Home Care Services. “This also gives PeaceHealth’s multimillionaire executives another opportunity to meet with us and prevent a strike. Nurses remain ready and willing to meet them anywhere, anytime. But we’re not holding our breath.”

The more than 90 registered nurses at PeaceHealth Sacred Heart Home Care Services are represented by the Oregon Nurses Association (ONA).

Local nurses and PeaceHealth executives have had two mediation sessions since the limited duration strike ended. Nurses made significant movement in the first session March 6 in hopes of getting movement from PeaceHealth. Unfortunately, PeaceHealth executives did not significantly improve their proposals to reach a fair deal on March 15. There is a future mediation session scheduled for March 20.

PeaceHealth’s corporate executives in Washington have spent the last year low-balling home care nurses in contract negotiations—offering lower pay than PeaceHealth Sacred Heart hospital nurses at Riverbend and lower than nurses at other home care agencies. PeaceHealth’s disrespect towards nurses and their patients has driven nearly a quarter of nurses at PeaceHealth Sacred Heart Home Care Services to leave. Another one-third of nurses plan to leave if PeaceHealth continues shortchanging patients and providers. Fewer nurses means home-bound patients and their families suffer from care delays, receive fewer treatments and ring up costly hospital readmissions bills.

Nurses began negotiating with PeaceHealth executives in February 2023 and have been working on an expired contract since April 2023.

The Oregon Nurses Association (ONA) represents a diverse community of 18,000 nurses, and health care professionals throughout Oregon. Together, we use our collective power to advocate for critical issues impacting patients, nurses, and health care professionals including a more effective, affordable and accessible healthcare system; better working conditions for all healthcare professionals; and healthier communities. For more information visit www.OregonRN.org.