Hospital

St. Charles Health System leaders adopted “crisis standards of care” to avoid having to comply with rules that govern nurse staffing levels. They rescinded the move after OHA said it would violate state law.

The Oregon Nurses Association says the new contract delivers higher wages and a better system to guarantee Providence St. Vincent nurses get to take meal breaks.

Medical providers at the region’s only hospital system now must scrutinize patient admissions and move people out of the hospital faster, “sometimes uncomfortably early.”

The Oregon Nurses Association announced last week that 40 health care technical workers were forming a union at St. Anthony Hospital in Pendleton.

Oregon's strict law regulating health care mergers may keep religiously affiliated health systems that do not provide abortion care from expanding

No longer convinced their employer is committed to service, roughly a third of nurses employed by Providence said they were ready to strike. Then Providence agreed to pay hikes and staffing changes at the health system's St. Vincent hospital in Portland.

Cash advances from the federal government were a windfall for hospital systems early in the pandemic, but the strain hasn’t stopped and now the loans have come due.

More than 700 days have passed since the first confirmed case of COVID-19 in Oregon. Deep into the second year of the pandemic, the staff at Salem's only hospital are fighting to keep serving all the patients that come through their doors, without breaking under the pressure.

Oregon's hospitals are so short on beds, many have been forced to cancel elective surgeries. One underreported problem: about 10 percent of hospital beds are occupied by patients who are ready to leave but have nowhere to go.

OHSU cut its original hospitalization forecast by more than half, based on reports that, while the omicron virus is leading to more COVID-19 infections, people are not getting as severely ill.