News

LA GRANDE – Grande Ronde Hospital and Clinics (GRH) will close its Hospice care program in June 2021. We are working with other local hospice caregivers in our community to ensure a smooth and professional transition over the next few weeks to these alternative caregivers. With more than one Hospice program in our community, we are confident this transition will be a seamless move for the very limited patients we currently have in our care.

This change does not affect our Home Health Care Services program, which is thriving and will continue to serve the community.

Many considerations were taken into account before the final decision was made by the Board of Trustees during its May 2021 meeting, according to President and CEO Jeremy Davis.

“Our community is not exempt from the serious national shortage on healthcare workers. Over the past year, it has become increasingly difficult to find nursing staff to support our hospice program. Director of Home Care Services Selina Shaffer and her team have worked hard to recruit and keep the program alive. On behalf of the organization, I appreciate the exhaustive efforts they have made,” says Davis.

Shaffer echoed those sentiments, adding that when the needed workforce supply began to wane over the past year, she realized she had to look beyond options to continue the program.

“It was not a recommendation that we made lightly, as we have provided this service since the 1980s. Over the past year, however, the fallout from COVID-19 has changed the workforce landscape and we are no longer immune to that reality in Union County. At some point, we had to acknowledge that. We also knew this change would allow us to focus our efforts on providing the much needed Home Health Care that our patients and community have come to expect from us. We set very high standards for the care we provide with all of our service lines and clinics at GRH, and we intend to keep those standards in our Home Health Care Services program,” says Shaffer.

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Grande Ronde Hospital and Clinics is a state and nationally recognized and award winning not-for-profit health system that includes a 25-bed Critical Access Hospital and 12 outpatient clinics. We are located in Union County, Oregon, serving our base population of more than 25,000 residents, as well as providing services for the greater Eastern Oregon region. Since 1907, Grande Ronde Hospital has led this region in efforts to stabilize and secure rural health care services for the communities we serve, while also working to improve the quality of life of all our residents. Today we employ more than 700 people, all dedicated to providing quality health care services to our patients. We offer a broad range of diagnostic, surgical and therapeutic outpatient services, a Level IV Trauma Emergency Services Department, a Family Birthing Center; Physical, Occupational and Speech Rehabilitation Therapy and Sports Medicine Services, and Home Care Services providing both home health and hospice care needs. We also operate 12 primary and specialty care clinics: the Cardiology Clinic, the Dermatology Clinic, the Elgin Clinic, the Hematology & Oncology Clinic, the Neurology Clinic, the Regional Medical Clinic, the Sleep Clinic, the Specialty Clinic (General Surgery, Orthopedics & Sports Medicine, Otolaryngology (ENT), Podiatry, Rheumatology, and Urology), Urgent Care, the Wound Care Clinic, the Union Clinic, and the Women’s & Children’s Clinic (Gynecology, Obstetrics and Pediatrics). For more information, please visit www.grh.org.