Ashland Community Hospital FAQ

There are significant and growing challenges for health care organizations across the country. The financial and regulatory landscape in Oregon is worsening. Operating the hospital with inpatient services is no longer viable, and duplicating services with Rogue Regional Medical Center just 11 miles away is not the best use of much-needed health care resources in our region.

In the coming months, the small inpatient hospital will close its license and transition to be a satellite campus of Rogue Regional, and continue offering a 24/7 Emergency Department (ED) and other key services including outpatient surgeries, lab and imaging in its current location on Maple Street in Ashland. We believe this decision will allow us to continue delivering critical health care services to the community, as well as minimize the impact on our workforce, which we recognize as the largest employer is vital for the local economy.

There are many contributing factors. There have been shifts in demographics in the local community that have impacted the viability of keeping the hospital in its current configuration. In addition, proposed cuts to Medicaid at the federal and state level are expected over the next several years. Even prior to the anticipated funding reductions in the One Big Beautiful Bill, the regulatory burden on hospitals in the state of Oregon is untenable. Oregon hospitals are three-times more regulated than other hospitals in the country, adding unnecessary administrative costs without associated funding. As stewards of invaluable health care resources in the region, Asante aims to keep pace with these challenges and not wait to act.

Non-profit health care organizations in Oregon face a dual burden of significant federal cuts, as well as a number of recent unfunded mandates from the Oregon State Legislature and Oregon Health Authority that have required health care systems to reexamine operations in order to remain independent and financially sustainable.

These following changes will impact Asante:

State

• Hospital Staffing Law – the 2023 Hospital Staffing Law has resulted in Asante incurring significantly increased administrative costs and fees, exacerbating the financial strain on hospitals. This will likely increase due to the penalties and the administrative burden of responding to investigatory demands by the Oregon Health Authority (OHA). The law continues to carry a high financial cost to health care systems – without any offset from the legislature to account for lost operating revenue.
• Presumptive Charity Care – despite known implementation concerns, particularly around the efficacy of the available screening tools, the legislature passed a bill that now requires health care systems to implement presumptive financial screening for charity care.
  
  Due to the shortcomings of the screening tools, this process initially resulted in a number of high-income individuals receiving charity care, as well as many complaints from members of the community due to the requirement that hospitals presumptively screen, regardless of consent or active participation in the process.
• Labor shortages due to refusal to join Compact – Oregon is one of only eight states that is not a member of the Nurse Licensure Compact, which discourages out-of-state nurses from taking roles in Oregon by delaying licensure approvals, leading to a persistent labor shortage and increased labor costs.
• Health Care Market Oversight and corporate practice of medicine laws – Oregon has some of the most restrictive laws on the books that place significant limits on what types of transactions, and with whom, health care systems can engage. This acts to prevent many common ownership and financing structures that otherwise can provide lifelines to strained physician practices and other business owned by physicians. The HCMO process itself is unnecessarily invasive and complicated, and the State’s costs of the programs are paid directly by the organizations being reviewed. Other structures that could potentially have been explored have been ruled out due, in part, to these regulatory hurdles.
• Hospital licensing fees – despite significant financial pressures on health care systems, the Oregon legislature passed legislation increasing hospital licensing fees by 400% in 2025.
• Looming budget cuts – the Oregon Legislature is anticipating a budget deficit this coming budgetary cycle, and OHA is proposing significant budget cuts, including potentially maternity care, Disproportionate Share Hospital funds, training funds for providers and hospital discharge financial support.
• Cost Growth Target – Oregon’s Cost Growth Target places unrealistic cost increase limits on health care organizations, while imposing administratively burdensome performance improvement plans and stiff financial penalties for failure to meet such goals, despite health care organizations having little-to-no control over the price of goods and labor. This law overlooks the economic realities of the industry and forces health care organizations to divert critical resources toward documenting and defending broad, industry-wide trends—resources that should be focused on patient care.

Federal

• The One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) particularly impacts the state of Oregon, as the state has chronically underfunded the Medicaid program. One in three Oregonians currently rely on Medicaid for health insurance coverage.
  • Reduction of Medicaid eligible patients will result in a substantial increase in uninsured patients and uncompensated care.
  • The OBBBA decreases federal matching funds that are used to fund Oregon’s Medicaid program.
  • The OBBBA impact on Medicare sequestration, if not waived by Congress.
  • Reduction in Disproportionate Share Hospital payments, which are used to help cover the cost of treating vulnerable patients.
  • Reduction of State Directed Payments through our CCOs.
• Expiration of ACA Tax Credits – the expiration of tax credits will lead to an increase in premiums and more uninsured patients.
• Tariff impacts on supply costs.
• Pharmaceutical impacts, through changes to 340B and overall cost specifically in cancer care.

The hospital has sustained a significant decline in birth rates and inpatient admissions and has many duplicative services with Rogue Regional 11 miles away. With the significant headwinds hospitals face today, we can no longer justify maintaining the license for a hospital that operates in the red.

We will offer services at this facility the community is accessing, which is emergency services in the ER, outpatient surgeries, lab and imaging. The facility will continue operating with those services as a satellite campus of Rogue Regional. In addition, we plan to transfer the 49-bed license to Rogue Regional.

• Over the last few years, the ER volume has grown by 9% annually in Ashland, with 53% of visits from Ashland residents in 2025.
• Our inpatient volumes declined 14% over the last year.
• 208 total births in the last year, 45 of which were cesarean deliveries. 
  • Just 37 births from Ashland residents.
  • Birth rates have declined by 36% at the hospital overall.

System statistics

The facility is on pace for a negative operating margin this year—a $12 million decline year-over-year.

Other Asante Physician Partners outpatient clinics near the hospital will remain open including Family Medicine and Obstetrics; Internal Medicine, Endocrinology and General Surgery.

Asante employs 366 providers, including 226 physicians. In 2025, we recruited a record 68 additional providers to work in the region at significant unfunded investment. As the largest recruiter and employer of physicians in southern Oregon, efforts spent on unneeded regulatory burden take away resources that could be invested in both primary and specialty care access. Southern Oregon is significantly underserved from a physician workforce perspective, and Asante is uniquely positioned to address those needs as part of its charitable mission.

All employees in departments remaining at the facility will continue their existing roles. Staff within impacted departments will be offered a like position at Asante’s other hospitals.

By operation of law, when Ashland Community Hospital converts to a satellite campus of Rogue Regional, the medical staff at Ashland Community Hospital will disband. Current physicians and other providers who wish to continue working at the new satellite facility will need to become members of the Rogue Regional medical staff. Asante will take proactive steps to facilitate this transition with little to no gaps in coverage.

We’re going to evaluate continued participation in the program as part of the process for converting the facility. Having this designation does not change our approach to compassionate care for all patients.

We plan for this transition to take place in late spring. We anticipate that services will operate normally until then. Alternatively, you and your physician or provider can choose to deliver at Rogue Regional or another facility. Please consult your physician or other provider of birthing services to discuss your birth plan.

Yes. In 2024, we opened the new Olsrud Family Women’s and Children’s Hospital at Rogue Regional, which includes the Binette Family Birth Center. Additionally, we operate a Family Birth Center in Grants Pass at Three Rivers Medical Center.

• Over the last year, the Ashland facility had 208 total births, 45 of which were cesarean deliveries.
  
  • Just 37 births from Ashland residents.
  • Birth rates have declined by 36% at the hospital overall.
• Ashland residents delivered 25% more births at Rogue Regional than Ashland Community Hospital.

In 2025, Rogue Regional treated 18,466 adult inpatients and delivered 1,650 babies.

All current Asante Imaging services will continue at the facility, including: X-ray, ultrasound, mammography, MRI and CT scan.

Following years of operating in the red, attributing losses to low Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements, charity care and unpaid bills, the City of Ashland chose to sell the  hospital in 2012. Asante and the City had an affiliation agreement that began in 2013; followed by a full merger into Asante in 2017. Between 2014 and 2017, Asante assumed the City’s $8 million in hospital debt and invested $10 million in the facility. In addition, Asante assumed the underfunded Ashland defined benefit plan and has contributed $18 million since the acquisition to get the defined benefit plan fully funded for Asante Ashland employees.

We are working directly with the City of Ashland to ensure the continuation of our long-time partnership and mutually aligned goals and believe the proposed structure that will retain the Emergency Department, Lab, Imaging and other outpatient services will allow the facility to continue to provide important services to the community now and into the future.

Both parties are working collaboratively to close out the Affiliation Agreement.

Ashland Community Health Foundation is a separate independent organization from the hospital.

The Asante Foundation is happy to work with you directly on this. We can pass your information on to them, and they will be in touch, or you can contact them directly.

This will not affect your insurance coverage for any Asante hospitals or clinics.

The conversion of this facility is not anticipated to occur until late spring 2026. This change will not impact most of our scheduled appointments. If your appointments are before spring of 2026, you will not need to re-schedule. We will actively contact any patients impacted with appointment changes. We encourage you to continue to be seen – the ED, Lab and Imaging will continue uninterrupted.

As always, patients who will be impacted by a physician or provider change will be contacted directly. Patients who are pregnant and plan to deliver after late spring 2026 will need to identify a physician or provider with privileges at Rogue Regional or the facility of their choice.

No. This decision for Ashland is part of an overall strategy to ensure the organization continues to be sustainable across all of our facilities. We will continue the services that the Ashland community utilizes the most under a different operating model, while consolidating inpatient services at Rogue Regional just 11 miles away.

No. Asante is making this change to ensure financial sustainability to support remaining independent and prosperous into the future. Not making changes like this would jeopardize long-term viability.

We deeply value the City of Ashland and its local community, and we believe that we are best positioned to continue serving the community. Converting to a satellite campus is the pathway to keep the facility in the community for the long-term, maintain key services and continue local ownership. Any other operator of the hospital would face the same challenges. Asante is best positioned given our other facilities and resources available in the valley.

We believe that this will allow us to improve access to care by rebalancing resources that would otherwise be spent on underutilized services at Ashland Community Hospital and reallocate across the system where the need is greater.

Yes, the Orthopedic Surgery and Spine Care clinic in Ashland is closing on March 4. In the event a service, procedure or follow-up care cannot be completed by March 4, we are supporting patients with referrals to a new provider within the community.

We do not anticipate a major impact on independent practice groups in Ashland. Asante is still going to be in Ashland and will be open for outpatient services, including Lab, Imaging and surgery. Anesthesia coverage will continue for surgeries and eye procedures.

Other Asante Physician Partners outpatient clinics near the hospital will remain open.

We have a dedicated regional Transfer Admit Center that helps facilitate transfers across the region and will help transfer patients to another facility that can address more acute inpatient or specialty needs.

The decision to convert Ashland Community Hospital to an Emergency Medical Services Satellite is purely to maintain clinical and operational sustainability and access to care across the system/region.

No, that case is unrelated to this decision.

No. Asante is a locally managed and governed not-for-profit independent health system, and we are making this change for the reasons stated. We will be working in close partnership with the Oregon Health Authority, and using their guidance to ensure a smooth transition of licensure with minimal or no interruption in service availability.

We have heard from many hospitals throughout the State that they are facing persistent financial and regulatory pressures and, while we hope that others are not required to further cut services or close hospitals, we anticipate that other systems are facing difficult choices.

We believe this change will continue to serve patients in northern California by providing continued closer access to emergency care and outpatient services. Higher acuity patients are typically transferred from facilities within northern California to Rogue Regional and we do not anticipate this will change.

No. This will be a separate satellite designation that is outside the scope of the current Rogue Regional Collective Bargaining Agreement.

Many patients seek both emergency and non-emergency care by accessing the EDs at our various hospitals. We anticipate that the continued utilization of the ED in Ashland will hopefully alleviate some pressure on Rogue Regional. The Immediate Care on the Rogue Regional campus is also a great resource for non-emergent but urgent illness and injuries.

Your medical records will remain with Asante; if you decide to seek care with another provider we can help with a transfer of your medical records by calling (541) 201-4070 or visit www.asante.org/patients-visitors/medical-records/.

This planning is underway, and we will share this information in late spring 2026.