This article has been updated with additional reporting.
PeaceHealth President and Chief Executive Officer Liz Dunne is retiring at the end of the year following a decade at the helm of the Vancouver, Washington-based Catholic health system.
The change in leadership comes at a time when the nonprofit hospital and clinic chain has struggled with financial challenges and labor strife, including strikes. PeaceHealth operates in Washington, Alaska and Oregon, including hospitals in Springfield, Florence and Cottage Grove
Sarah Ness, current executive vice president and chief administrative officer, takes over as president and CEO next year.
In May, citing revenue shortfalls, PeaceHealth laid off 1% of its workforce, or about 162 people, and declared a freeze on hiring throughout 2025 in many non-clinician or patient-facing jobs. The recent layoffs were confined to PeaceHealth facilities in Springfield, Ore., and Vancouver, Wash. In 2023, Peacehealth laid off 251 people across Oregon and three other states, including staff in Lane County and Vancouver.
The most recent round of layoffs followed multiple strikes by unions representing health care staff, technicians and service workers across the health care chain demanding better wages and affordable health care, among other issues. In May, PeaceHealth reached a tentative agreement with frontline healthcare workers from PeaceHealth Southwest, PeaceHealth Sacred Heart and PeaceHealth St. John.
PeaceHealth’s financial problems track with other hospitals that say escalating costs are outpacing revenues. About half of Oregon’s hospitals lost money in 2024, according to a May 1 Hospital Association of Oregon report, with many others skating on slim profit margins.
In June, Providence announced it was cutting 134 jobs in Oregon and more than 450 across six other states, citing expected cuts in federal support for Medicare and Medicaid, among issues.
Based in Vancouver, Wash., PeaceHealth has approximately 16,000 caregivers, nearly 3,200 physicians and clinicians, more than 160 clinics and 9 medical centers serving both urban and rural communities throughout the Pacific Northwest.
The PeaceHealth announcement of her retirement credits Dunne with leading PeaceHealth’s transformation into an integrated health system, and helping expand access to care with partnerships with Kaiser Permanente and Oregon Health & Science University. Dunne also oversaw the acquisition of ZoomCare and joint ventures to expand behavioral health, rehabilitation and specialty pharmacy services.
But her retirement also sparked criticism of her tenure from the Oregon Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals, which represents approximately 2,000 healthcare professionals at PeaceHealth facilities in Oregon and Southwest Washington.
“During Liz Dunne’s tenure, we witnessed unilateral decisions that altered wages and working conditions, as well as layoffs that disproportionately affected frontline healthcare workers,” said Sarina Roher, the union's president, in a statement. “We are hopeful that this leadership transition will mark a new direction, one that centers patients and respects the vital role of healthcare workers in delivering safe, equitable care.”
Two years ago, after years of red ink, the system sparked controversy by closing its University District hospital in downtown Eugene. In October, PeaceHealth agreed to acquire four clinics from Providence Medical Group, and it has begun building a rehabilitation hospital in Springfield in partnership with Lifepoint Health, a national health care system. Last month, it announced it would again partner with Lifepoint to build a behavioral health hospital in Vancouver. Tennessee-based Lifepoint is owned by a private equity firm.
Ness has been with the organization for more than two decades, and will be only the second female lay leader in PeaceHealth’s history.