Asante Health's decision to shutter 49 inpatient beds as well as the birthing center at Ashland Community Hospital is sparking concerns for residents, caregivers and others.
The move comes despite strong overall financials reported by the regional hospital system. Also, financial reporting to the state portrays the Ashland hospital as a major earning center for Asante, showing profits of close to 20% in the first six months of the year.
A press release and web page posted by Asante management, however, suggested that the state financial reporting is inaccurate, contending the facility is on pace to lose $7.3 million this year after notching profits of more than $5 million the year before.
“The financial and regulatory landscape for Oregon hospitals is worsening,” said a prepared statement that Asante attributed to Tom Gessel, its president and CEO. “This past year, Ashland Community Hospital lost millions of dollars.”
The statement added that the system's leadership felt “operating the hospital with inpatient and obstetrics services is no longer viable, and duplicating underutilized services with Rogue Regional just 11 miles away is not the best use of limited health care resources in the valley.”
Asked to explain or comment on the discrepancy in financial portrayals, Asante officials did not immediately respond to The Lund Report.
The hospital’s emergency room and outpatient care will continue, so the move does not represent a complete shutdown. But the hospital will cede its license to the state, instead becoming a satellite facility of Rogue Regional Medical Center in Medford.
Asked what it intends to do with the vacant space, an Asante spokeperson said management has not determined that yet.
Observers said the announcement represents a blow to Ashland considering the hospital’s origin of being founded by the city in 1907 and turned over to Asante in 2013.
The news is “sad for the community” given the hospital's history, said Sue Kohler, a retired physician who lives in Medford and who remains an active volunteer working on health care access. “I don't know what's going to happen to the OB services that they offered over there, which I think were important to that community. So there's a lot to still kind of figure out in terms of how it's going to change the flow of patient care. But it is going to mean that the people in Ashland are going to have to travel more [for care]. And historically, that's not been something that has been embraced by them.”
According to Asante, staff whose positions are going away in Ashland will be offered positions elsewhere in the system.
The health system's public postings said births have dropped by about a third, mirroring a trend happening at rural hospitals across the country.
“I think that that's a huge hardship,” Kohler said of the trend. “I mean, people don't want to have to — and shouldn't have to — travel far to deliver their children. And it just creates a whole other set of complications.”
On Wednesday state Rep. Pam Marsh (D-Ashland) told the Ashland.news website Wednesday that the news represented “a huge blow, adding that “a community that loses its hospital, I mean I think will be a huge adjustment in … the way that we talk about what we offer to people who think about coming to the community ... We are a community that has really treasured our little community hospital”
The announcement followed news that Vibra Specialty Hospital in Portland is closing in February, meaning 300 jobs will go away. The Oregon Nurses Association issued a statement commenting on both, saying “these closures represent a devastating loss of critical health care access for Oregonians, forcing patients to travel farther for care, increasing risks in emergencies, and placing additional strain on an already overburdened health system.”
The Vibra news, sparked by notice given to the state, was first reported by Willamette Week.
Asante has been fighting the nurses union's organizing at its hospital in Medford, trying and failing to overturn its employees' vote there and more recently suing the union over what it called unapproved visits.
It has also been in the news over a former nurse's alleged fentanyl-swapping that may have contributed to patient deaths there, according to several lawsuits, as well as due to a federal fraud investigation based on a surgeon's whistleblower complaint.
Asante finances strong
The Fitch bond rating agency in December 2024 affirmed Asante’s bond rating at A+ and upgraded its financial outlook from negative to “stable.”
For the first six months of 2025, net patient revenue at the Ashland hospital — meaning for services provided dropped by nearly $5 million to just over $34 million compared to the same period in 2024, according to the hospital finances dashboard maintained by the Oregon Health Authority. That said, despite significantly fewer dollars coming in, the Ashland hospital notched more profit, with its operating margin growing by about $500,000 to $7.43 million in that six-month period. It also reported gains in non-operating revenue, pushing its total overall profit from $9 million to $10 million.
Overall, as of Sept. 30, Asante as a health system overall continued to operate in the black, according to another filing, with overall revenues growing by 8.9% even as expenses grew by only 5%.
For the first nine months of the year its net operating margin, or profit, was 6.3%, a big boost over the 2.9% profit reported in the same period of 2024.
According to a spokesperson for the Oregon Health Authority, “The planned satellite emergency department in Ashland would be subject to the provisions of the federal Emergency Medical Treatment & Active Labor Act (EMTALA). Hospitals with an Emergency Department, including satellite Emergency Departments, are specifically required to provide all patients presenting with a possible emergency medical condition with a medical screening examination and to stabilize any patients with an emergency medical condition including patients in labor.
“Most hospitals use maternity services staff to provide the emergency care to patients in labor. Hospital locations that do not offer maternity services are still required to provide appropriate care to patients in labor, which may necessitate additional training for Ashland Emergency Department staff.”
