A few stories about St. Charles caregivers going above and beyond to help people have made their way to me lately, and they serve as good reminders of why we do what we do.

These stories played out in three different towns in the area we serve – which is about the size of South Carolina, in case you weren’t aware.

They involved different types of caregivers – nurses, a surgeon, pharmacists, administrators, lab workers and so on. One of these situations involved a single caregiver, one involved a team and one required cooperation between St. Charles and multiple partner agencies.

In one case, a medical assistant on a break from work was running errands in town, discovered a person struggling and performed CPR until an ambulance arrived. She is credited with saving the person’s life.

In another, St. Charles caregivers moved swiftly and efficiently to help with a traumatic accident. They gathered necessary supplies, went to the scene of the incident and, working closely with emergency responders, provided life-saving care as quickly as possible.

In the third, a group of pharmacists became aware of a patient who was concerned about a barrier standing between her and an important medication. They worked together to help her overcome that barrier and filled her prescription the next day.

In a variety of situations, St. Charles caregivers came across a person who needed help. And in all three, our people rose to the occasion just like so many of our caregivers do day in and day out.

Quite simply, these stories have served as a reminder to me that, at its core, St. Charles is about much more than buildings and technology, policies and procedures.

St. Charles is about people.

It’s about people who need care, it’s about the people who provide that care, and it’s about the interaction between those two groups. Those interactions happen hundreds – maybe thousands – of times every single day at St. Charles, and they are overwhelmingly positive.

I am proud to lead an organization that puts people at the very center of everything we do.

Sincerely,
Steve

St. Charles Health System announces cancer center expansion in Redmond

BEND, Ore. – More than 40% of patients treated at the St. Charles Cancer Center in Bend travel from Redmond, Madras, Prineville and other rural communities for their care. If they need radiation as part of their treatment, this can mean traveling more than 50 miles for services multiple days in a row for weeks at a time.

“We know that many of our patients travel farther than patients at other cancer centers in the country for their care,” said Dr. Linyee Chang, medical director of the St. Charles Cancer Center. “Some patients opt out of treatment because of the travel and that’s not OK.”

To better meet the needs of these patients, St. Charles Health System is excited to announce plans to expand cancer services in Redmond.   

Using $90 million secured through bonds in the fall of 2020 that are restricted and must be used for new construction, St. Charles will build a new cancer center on the St. Charles Redmond campus at the corner of Canal Boulevard and Kingwood Avenue.

“The announcement of a world-class cancer center to be constructed here at the St. Charles hospital in Redmond is a milestone event in the history of our community,” said Redmond Mayor Ed Fitch. “I want to express our deep appreciation to the St. Charles Board of Directors for its commitment to the health care needs of Redmond as well as the other communities this center will serve. The city and the community will do all we can to help facilitate this project and the future expansion of health care services here in Redmond.” 

The facility will include a linear accelerator to provide radiation oncology treatments, along with space for chemotherapy treatments, nutrition, massage, acupuncture and other support services. It will also include space for additional outpatient services and medical office building needs.

“As the health care industry continues to face significant challenges, we are looking to maximize the efficiency of the services we provide to ensure we continue meeting the most critical needs of our Central Oregon communities,” said Dr. Steve Gordon, interim president and CEO of St. Charles. “We are making a significant investment in ambulatory services on the Redmond campus that will ultimately provide better access to care for patients.”

Building design is underway and ground was broken on the project in the summer of 2024. Currently, the facility is slated to open in 2026.

View preliminary site plan

About St. Charles Health System

St. Charles Health System, Inc., headquartered in Bend, Ore., owns and operates St. Charles Bend, Madras, Prineville and Redmond. It also owns family care clinics in Bend, Madras, Prineville, Redmond, La Pine and Sisters. St. Charles is a private, not-for-profit Oregon corporation and is the largest employer in Central Oregon with more than 4,500 caregivers. In addition, there are more than 350 active medical staff members and nearly 200 visiting medical staff members who partner with the health system to provide a wide range of care and service to our communities.

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Residency Programs at St. Charles

Residency Program in Rural Oregon

The Three Sisters Rural Track Program is the first Graduate Medical Education Program and Rural Track Program in Central Oregon. As a 1-2 program, this residency will recruit up to six residents per class.

Residents will spend their first year in Portland, followed by two years in Central Oregon at our Madras hospital and Family Care Clinic. In partnership with Oregon Health & Science University, this program brings together educational teams within various clinical models to help meet the needs of rural parts of Oregon.

Caring for our rural communities

Why Central Oregon?

In Central Oregon, mountains, rivers, forests and high lakes abound, offering amazing recreational opportunities for adventurous souls. Plus countless craft beer pubs, cozy local restaurants and fun events every weekend only add to the charm of this place we call home.

Visit Central Oregon

Program Contacts

Dr. Jinnell Lewis, Program Director (St. Charles Health System)
Jessica Latham, Program Coordinator (OHSU)
[email protected]

Visit OHSU's Three Sisters Rural Track Program page to learn more.

* NOTE: Attached is a photo of the honorees. Identification, from left to right: Kirsten Chavez, Hillary Dunbar, Labree Tolman, Samantha Martin.

St. Charles nurses honored with DAISY Award for outstanding, compassionate care

The following St. Charles Health System nurses have been honored with The DAISY Award for Extraordinary Nurses®, recognizing the outstanding, compassionate nursing care they provide patients and families every day:

• Bend: Kirsten Chavez, Neonatal Intensive Care Unit
• Madras: Labree Tolman, Emergency Department
• Prineville: Samantha Martin, Medical Services
• Redmond: Hillary Dunbar, Medical Services

Nominated by patients, families and colleagues, the award recipients were chosen by a committee at St. Charles.

The nurses—who represent all four St. Charles hospitals in Bend, Redmond, Madras and Prineville—were recognized with a ceremony on their respective units and presented with a certificate, a pin and a "healer's touch" sculpture by their hospital’s chief nursing officer. The DAISY honorees will also receive ongoing benefits, such as special rates for tuition and ANCC certification.

The DAISY Foundation is a not-for-profit organization that was established in memory of J. Patrick Barnes by members of his family. Patrick died at the age of 33 in late 1999 from complications of Idiopathic Thrombocytopenic Purpura (ITP), a little known but not uncommon auto-immune disease. (DAISY is an acronym for Diseases Attacking the Immune System.) The care Patrick and his family received from nurses while he was ill inspired this unique means of thanking nurses for making a profound difference in the lives of their patients and patient families.

"When Patrick was critically ill, our family experienced first-hand the remarkable skill and care nurses provide patients every day and night,” said Bonnie Barnes, FAAN, president and co-founder of The DAISY Foundation. “Yet these unsung heroes are seldom recognized for the super-human, extraordinary, compassionate work they do. The kind of work the nurses at St. Charles are called on to do every day epitomizes the purpose of The DAISY Award.”

This is one initiative of The DAISY Foundation to express gratitude to the nursing profession. Additionally, DAISY offers J. Patrick Barnes Grants for Nursing Research and Evidence-Based Practice Projects, The DAISY Faculty Award to honor inspiring faculty members in schools and colleges of nursing and The DAISY in Training Award for nursing students. More information is available at http://DAISYfoundation.org.

About St. Charles Health System

St. Charles Health System, Inc., headquartered in Bend, Ore., owns and operates St. Charles Bend, Madras, Prineville and Redmond. It also owns family care clinics in Bend, La Pine, Madras, Prineville, Redmond and Sisters. St. Charles is a private, not-for-profit Oregon corporation and is the largest employer in Central Oregon with more than 4,200 caregivers. In addition, there are more than 350 active medical staff members and nearly 200 visiting medical staff members who partner with the health system to provide a wide range of care and service to our communities.

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The end of the year is a good time to look back, celebrate our successes, recognize the challenges ahead and reflect on the journey of the past 12 months.

After COVID-19 dominated our activities at St. Charles in 2020 and 2021, 2022 was about accepting the virus as a part of normal life, incorporating it into the day-to-day care we provide and continuing to innovate and improve in areas across the health system.

When I think about what St. Charles has accomplished in 2022, I am enormously proud of our caregivers and physicians, our leadership and our organization as a whole. It takes incredible teamwork, laser focus and dedication to the communities we serve to push a regional health system forward in the midst of a pandemic and unprecedented financial challenges, and our team has done exactly that.

Here are just a few of the things we’ve done that come to mind:

• Early this year, we rolled out outpatient treatments for people with COVID-19, and our Urgent Care clinics are now federally designated Test to Treat sites where people at high risk of severe COVID-19 illness can get fast and easy access to therapeutics.
• We opened a new Infectious Disease clinic, which offers travel medicine consults to help keep Central Oregonians safe and healthy when they leave the country.
• We’ve expanded our Center for Women’s Health, adding three new physicians and improving access to reproductive health care for all women.
• We have established training programs that provide a path to a career in patient care for our caregivers in non-medical positions as well as people outside the organization looking to get into health care. These programs are helping us address our significant staffing shortages.
• We hired our first manager of caregiver inclusion and experience, who is dedicated to making sure St. Charles is a place where people feel like they belong. And for the second time in three years, we received national recognition for our work to welcome the LGBTQ+ community.
• Our Three Sisters Rural Track graduate medical education program in Madras – a partnership with OHSU – continues to develop largely behind the scenes, with an aim to bring doctors to Jefferson County in 2025.
• We’ve brought back in-person events, such as the Heaven Can Wait 5K walk/run in Redmond and the annual Hospice Auction in Prineville, as well as important community efforts such as Stop the Bleed training and our Living Beyond Breast Cancer series.
• We’ve implemented a system-wide focus on our financial recovery efforts, which has helped our bottom line in recent months. At the same time, we are significantly restructuring how we work into service lines to improve patient care, patient outcomes and patient satisfaction, and we have launched what we’re calling our One St. Charles strategy to bring our organization closer together and guide us into the future.

This is, of course, just some of the good work happening across the health system – work that will continue in 2023 and beyond.

Thank you for your support of St. Charles.

Sincerely,
Steve

St. Charles staff and patients have seen an uptick in scams related to medical equipment.

These scams usually take the form of an unsolicited call (or other communication) from someone claiming to be from St. Charles, Medicare, an insurance company or a durable medical equipment company, offering you a free or low-cost medical device as an insurance “benefit.” These calls may even display what appears to be a legitimate phone number on caller ID.

These callers are trying to get valuable information from you, such as your Social Security Number or your insurance information. Do not give them your personal information. Instead, hang up and call your provider’s office to find out if they need information from you.

Furthermore, don’t order medical equipment over the phone unless you are advised to do so by your provider, and refuse delivery of medical equipment unless it was ordered by your doctor.

If a caller urges you to order a piece of equipment now for future use, that is a red flag. Charging insurance for equipment before your doctor certifies it as medically necessary is illegal.

Frequently review your health plan’s Explanation of Benefits or Medicare Summary Notice to ensure all charges are appropriate. If you see charges you don’t recognize, call Medicare at 1-800-MEDICARE (1-800-633-4227) or your insurance company immediately.

If you believe you have been a victim of any kind of phone scam, please consider reporting it to the organizations below.

• The Federal Trade Commission is the primary government agency that collects scam complaints:
  • Online: https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/#/
  • By phone: 1-877-382-4357
• To report suspected Medicare fraud: 1-800-MEDICARE (1-800-633-4227).
• Report caller ID spoofing to the Federal Communications Commission:
  • Online: https://consumercomplaints.fcc.gov/hc/en-us
  • By phone: 1-888-225-5322
• If you have been a victim of identity theft, visit https://identitytheft.gov/ for information on how to report.

Glenn Rodriguez, MD

Glenn Rodriguez, MD is a family medicine physician, medical educator and physician executive. Raised in Madras, he is a graduate of Stanford University and Case Western Reserve School of Medicine. Dr. Rodriguez completed his family medicine residency at Group Health Cooperative in Seattle, Washington and a visiting fellowship in geriatrics. His career includes roles as a clinician and physician leader with the Indian Health Service on the Navajo Nation, faculty member in the Oregon Health and Sciences University Department of Family Medicine and physician executive with Providence Health & Services, where he established the Providence Oregon Family Medicine Residency Program and served as Chief Medical Officer for the Oregon region. His special interests are in family medicine education, elder health care and efforts to create an exceptional primary care system in Oregon.

Reason for service: “The opportunity to help build accessible health care that works for everyone in Central Oregon.”

Gingerbread Pancakes

These pancakes are an easy way to feed the family during the holidays.

Ingredients

• 1⁄2 cup whole wheat flour
• 1⁄2 cup all-purpose flour
• 1⁄2 teaspoon salt
• 1⁄2 teaspoon baking soda
• 2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice
• 1 egg
• 2 Tablespoons molasses
• 1 Tablespoon vegetable oil
• 1 cup low-fat buttermilk

Directions

1. Mix dry ingredients in a bowl.
2. In another bowl, beat egg. Stir in molasses, oil and buttermilk.
3. Pour milk mixture into dry ingredients; stir together lightly.
4. Lightly spray a large skillet or griddle with non-stick cooking spray or lightly wipe with oil. Heat skillet or griddle over medium-high heat (350 degrees in an electric skillet). For each pancake, pour about 1/4 cup of batter onto the hot griddle.
5. Cook until pancakes are puffed and dry around edges. Turn and cook other side until golden brown.
6. Refrigerate leftovers within 2 hours.

Notes

• No pumpkin pie spice? Use 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon, 1/2 teaspoon dry ginger, and 1/8 teaspoon cloves or nutmeg.
• No buttermilk? Place 1 Tablespoon of lemon juice or vinegar in measuring cup and fill to the 1 cup line with milk. Stir and let set to thicken slightly.  
• To see if skillet is hot enough, sprinkle with a few drops of water. If drops skitter around, heat is just right.
• Top with applesauce, fresh fruit or yogurt.

St. Charles Health System joins Oregon hospitals in charging the state with violating civil rights of vulnerable patients

BEND, Ore. – In a move to protect the civil rights of vulnerable Oregonians, St. Charles Health System, based in Bend, Oregon, has joined Legacy Health, Providence Health & Services and PeaceHealth in a lawsuit against the Oregon Health Authority. The lawsuit, filed in September, aims to ensure the Oregon Health Authority fulfills its legal obligation to provide adequate mental health treatment capacity for civilly committed individuals.

The addition of St. Charles broadens the coalition, bringing representation from the largest health system east of the Cascades.

“Because the state is often refusing to take responsibility for civilly committed patients, we believe this patient population is not getting the care it deserves. The current situation is not good for the patients, our staff or the other patients we serve,” said Dr. Shane Coleman, clinical division director of psychiatry and behavioral health for St. Charles. “By joining this lawsuit, we hope OHA will hear our concerns and take action to build more capacity to serve these patients in an appropriate health care facility for the level of care they need.”

Under Oregon law, individuals who are a danger to themselves or others may be civilly committed by the state for involuntary treatment for up to 180 days. Acute care hospitals are often the first stop for many patients who require urgent care and short-term stabilization. Once that is achieved, the state is legally required to place these individuals in a facility that specializes in long-term treatment, such as secure treatment facilities or the Oregon State Hospital, and that can give them the appropriate and necessary care to enable them to regain their liberty.  

Rather than transfer these individuals to an appropriate facility, the state is confining them in community hospitals for weeks or months. Community hospitals are not equipped, staffed or designed to provide long-term mental health treatment. The behavioral health units in these hospitals are intended to serve the community as acute care facilities where patients in mental health crisis can be evaluated, stabilized and discharged to the next appropriate level of care. 

The Oregon Health Authority has not only failed in its responsibility to its most vulnerable population, but by relying on acute care hospitals, OHA has negatively affected the hospitals’ capacity to care for other patients experiencing acute mental health crises in their communities. Oregon is in the middle of an unprecedented mental health crisis, and community hospitals are desperately needed to treat and stabilize other vulnerable patients in crisis, many of whom are also struggling with substance abuse disorders and houselessness. 

About St. Charles Health System

St. Charles Health System, Inc., headquartered in Bend, Ore., owns and operates St. Charles Bend, Madras, Prineville and Redmond. It also owns family care clinics in Bend, Madras, Prineville, Redmond, La Pine and Sisters. St. Charles is a private, not-for-profit Oregon corporation and is the largest employer in Central Oregon with more than 4,500 caregivers. In addition, there are more than 350 active medical staff members and nearly 200 visiting medical staff members who partner with the health system to provide a wide range of care and service to our communities.

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