PeaceHealth Sacred Heart Medical Center at RiverBend is a thriving 347-bed regional medical center in Springfield.
It serves coastal and southern Oregon, as well as Lane County.
In the 10 years since it opened, RiverBend has become what PeaceHealth planners and community donors had envisioned—a life-saving, life-improving resource for everyone in the southern Willamette Valley and southern Oregon.
RiverBend will celebrate its 10th anniversary on August 10. This milestone provides an opportunity to take stock of all that has been accomplished in the past decade, thanks to visionary community leaders and thousands of RiverBend employees.
The anniversary also coincides with a new era of leadership for the Peace- Health Oregon network. Mary Kingston, a seasoned health-care executive from California, recently joined PeaceHealth as chief executive of the Oregon network.
Over the past 10 years, RiverBend has admitted 264,534 patients. Its emergency department has logged 559,545 visits. And its care teams have delivered 27,736 babies and performed 155,530 surgeries.
Thousands of those patients have travelled from southern Oregon or coastal Oregon for services not available in their home communities. They are premature infants needing special equipment and care. They are stroke and heart attack victims requiring immediate interventions to save precious brain and heart tissue. They are accident victims being whisked to RiverBend, a Level ll Trauma Center serving Lane, Linn, Douglas, Coos, Curry, Josephine, Jackson and Klamath counties.
A Level ll Trauma Center is just one rank under Oregon’s Level l Trauma Centers, which are found only in the Portland area.
RiverBend’s Level ll designation by the Oregon Health Authority means it is staffed and equipped to care for severely injured adult and pediatric patients with complex trauma at any time. RiverBend was ready in October 2015 when the unthinkable happened. Three of the most seriously injured victims in the deadly shooting at Umpqua Community College in Douglas County were cared for at RIverBend.
Care teams at RiverBend have received regional and national accolades. The Oregon Heart & Vascular Institute at RiverBend, one of the busiest and most respected centers of its kind in the Northwest, recently completed its 500th Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement (TAVR). RiverBend is among the leading hospitals in Oregon performing this minimally invasive procedure for certain patients with severe aortic stenosis.
For excellence in stroke care, RiverBend recently earned the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association’s Get With The Guidelines® – Stroke Gold Plus Quality Achievement Award for the seventh year in a row. RiverBend also was listed on the group’s Target: Stroke Elite Plus Honor Role for the second consecutive year.
And in a nod to RiverBend’s stunning site along the McKenzie River,
comforting architecture and caring staff, RiverBend ranked sixth this year in a
contest for the “Most Beautiful Hospitals” in the United States.
While Sacred Heart at RiverBend has continually grown and improved its core services since 2008, it has added new technology and treatments not previously available in the area.
One dramatic example is pediatric care. Over the past five years, RiverBend has added pediatric surgery, pediatric cardiology, pediatric hospitalists – a team of five pediatricians who practice solely in the hospital – and other services specifically for children who are sick, injured or have other medical conditions.
RiverBend at a Glance
Address: 3333 RiverBend Drive, Springfield, Ore.
Opened: Aug. 10, 2008
Size: Nearly 1.2 million square feet, including Oregon Heart & Vascular Institute
Site: 165 acres, with nearly three miles of biking and walking paths
Construction project cost: About $367 million for the hospital; about $567 million for the entire RiverBend campus
Employees: 2,434 (full-time equivalents)
Previously families, including many in southern Oregon, had to take their children to medical centers in Portland for these specialized procedures and treatments.
Next spring, the RiverBend campus will welcome another addition of special interest to families in southern and coastal Oregon. The 20-room Heartfelt House will open, providing families of patients from outside the Eugene-Springfield area with no- or low-cost accommodations. The single-story, 24,000- square-foot house will have one 10-room wing for families of children in the pediatric and Neonatal Intensive Care units and another 10-room wing for families of adult patients. Families of children will pay nothing to stay, and families of adult patients will pay on a sliding scale. No one will be turned away based on inability to pay.
The Heartfelt House, which will be completely funded by donations, will be managed by Ronald McDonald House Charities. With laundry facilities, a shared kitchen and dining area and outdoor garden and play- ground areas, the Heartfelt House will be a home away from home for out-of-area families needing that support.
Mary Kingston said she’s thrilled to be joining PeaceHealth Oregon in this milestone year. She began her career in nursing and has 30 years of wide-ranging executive experience. Most recently she was chief executive of two acute care hospitals with Providence St. Joseph Health in California.
“I’m truly committed to the areas of performance excellence, physician relations and financial stability, and my focus in this work is grounded in the values of respect, teamwork, compassion and servant leader- ship,” Kingston said. “I look forward to rolling up my sleeves and working in partnership with PeaceHealth leaders and caregivers to ensure together we deliver on our shared commitment to live true to the PeaceHealth Mission and Values.”
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