💉 Checking the Pulse 03/18/26

What the emails say: While reporting last year on nurse practitioner students’ struggle to find clinical placements at PeaceHealth St. Joseph, I was told repeatedly by many NP students that PeaceHealth had effectively stopped hosting such students for required clinical training. But these were just anecdotes, not facts. Then, the person at the University of Washington’s nursing school who’s responsible for placing NP students in hospitals told me that what I was hearing was true. Plus, she said she’d received an email from PeaceHealth earlier in the year saying so.

In those emails, which I obtained in a public records request, PeaceHealth said in February 2025, in short:

“Unfortunately, at this time, we do not have the capacity for a student placement program, as we do not have a student coordinator. If you have direct connections with providers or clinical managers, I encourage you to reach out to them directly to see if they have the capacity to take on a student.”

Then, in May 2025, PeaceHealth wrote to UW:

The emails also show that many providers at PeaceHealth St. Joseph are eagerly willing to host NP students, but their employer just hasn’t allowed it except for specific, rare instances, according to the emails.

“I am in full support. We would love to have on of your AGNP students,” Jerry Marschke, the head of cardiovascular services at St. Joseph, told UW in one email.

Multiple other providers in internal medicine and based at PeaceHealth clinics in Bellingham, expressed interest in hosting students, too.

While these emails — which were only available via a public records request because of UW, not because of PeaceHealth, which is private and not subject to public records laws — were insightful, it didn’t begin that way. The first batch of records UW sent me included Costco receipts and spreadsheets listing an abundance of snack options and prices, all seemingly regarding the university's … vending machines. We all make silly mistakes, and this served as a reminder that public records officers are humans, too, who do really important work and aren’t often recognized for the value, to say nothing of the volume, of their work.

In the last edition of this newsletter, I shared a few links to reporting out of Oregon on the dispute between PeaceHealth and the local emergency physician group staffing the emergency department. The issue is far from resolved in Eugene-Springfield, as seen in protests and national headlines last week. The majority of the hospital staff and the entire ED are protesting what they call a “hostile takeover” of the contract for the ED staffing group by a national firm. What the ED physicians are fearful of and want to prevent is precisely what we have in Bellingham: an ED staffed by a behemoth of a corporation owned by private equity.

So, to better understand PeaceHealth as a system and what it means for a local ED group to be owned by a multi-state corporation with private equity ties, I recently spoke with two physicians currently staffing PeaceHealth’s Eugene ED.

The “hostile takeover” is providing an opportunity for local providers and community members to stand up against corporate medicine in real time, the physicians said. I’m told that, amid the community pushback, PeaceHealth dispatched its system-wide CEO and chief operating officer to successfully ease the concerns of hospital staff in Eugene. The executives listened and then doubled down on their decision to oust the local physician group with a 35-year track record, the physicians said.

Importantly, the physicians noted, is that they hold no ill will toward PeaceHealth or ApolloMD, the Atlanta-based staffing firm that PeaceHealth is bringing in to take over the local Oregon group. (ApolloMD already staffs PeaceHealth's Ketchikan, Alaska ED.) In fact, PeaceHealth told ApolloMD that the majority of physicians currently employed by the local Eugene group would stay on and work for the new group, one physician told me. However, that isn’t true: All 41 employees of the ED said they would not work for the new group.

Corporate medical groups often force good providers to work for corporations they don’t want to, I’m told.

“Apollo is a corporation. Regardless of structure, finance-backing, they're a corporation, and a corporation's goal is the bottom line,” one Eugene ED physician said. “Our goal is to take really good care of our patients.”

What has your experience at St. Joseph’s emergency department entailed? Get in touch: [email protected]

ProPublica — The national nonprofit, investigative newsroom, published an investigation a few years ago into TeamHealth, then the largest staffing firm for ED doctors. TeamHealth, which is owned by the private equity group Blackstone, is the staffing firm for PeaceHealth St. Joseph in Bellingham, which is why, amid the turmoil in Oregon around another PeaceHealth ED, I’ve been turning to the investigation to better understand the group employing our ED physicians.

Health Care Affordability Lab — Researchers at Yale University recently launched an interactive set of tools that allow anyone to visually explore health care consolidation nationwide. The new lab’s hospital markets data visualization tool is a fascinating experience to get lost in for a few hours.