A union representing around 440 workers at a Coos Bay hospital is fighting to keep the public hospital away from a private equity firm.
Bay Area Hospital is the largest hospital on Oregon’s South Coast. The hospital, governed by an elected board, is pursuing a partnership with Quorum Health in an effort to fix its dire financial situation.
United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 555 is pushing hospital leaders and legislators to find an alternative that doesn’t involve Quorum Health, but the clock is ticking.
Bay Area Hospital and Quorum Health signed a non-binding letter of intent in December, with plans to sign a definitive agreement near the end of March.
“Until Quorum takes possession of the hospital’s assets, we’re not done fighting this,” Local 555 political director Mike Selvaggio told the Labor Press.
With more than 1,100 workers, Bay Area Hospital is the largest employer in the region.
According to the letter of intent, Quorum would offer jobs to current hospital employees in good standing, as long as they meet the company’s criteria, and would maintain existing job titles, pay, and benefits. Quorum would lease the hospital and purchase its assets. Quorum would be required to continue to operate the hospital as a general acute care hospital for at least 10 years, unless a board of hospital physicians and community members — selected by Quorum — approves changes.
But Quorum could operate Bay Area Hospital as an acute care hospital and still drastically reduce services, Local 555 said. That could mean significant job losses and less access to care for South Coast residents.
Local 555 represents health care technicians at Bay Area Hospital. Oregon Nurses Association represents nearly 350 registered nurses at the hospital.
“Both parties are making big promises, but we know this type of corporate arrangement typically leads to higher costs and lower quality care for patients,” ONA spokesperson Kevin Mealy said in an email to the Labor Press.
The hospital’s financial issues aren’t new, Mealy said, and the hospital should have included workers in discussions about how to improve care and hospital finances much sooner.
Quorum currently owns or leases 12 hospitals around the country. The for-profit company was formed in 2016 with 38 hospitals but has since closed or sold 26. In August 2023, Quorum shut down a rural North Carolina hospital. Workers were notified less than two hours before the hospital closed the entrances, local news reported.
UFCW is pushing for a legislative package that would expand the hospital district boundaries, ask local voters to approve a tax to fund hospital operations, and provide state funding to tackle the hospital’s most pressing financial needs, which include currently being in default on a $47 million loan.
Bay Area Hospital doesn’t tax district residents. A poll conducted for the hospital in Spring 2024 found 59% of voters would support a tax that cost them up to $100, but that would only bring in $4 million for the hospital, which the hospital said wasn’t enough. UFCW’s proposal would expand the district boundaries so that a tax would also be paid by property owners in areas that rely on the hospital but aren’t currently in the official district, the union said.
In a March 2025 poll for UFCW, when told the options were a tax levy or the sale and lease of the hospital to a private company, 56% of voters in the proposed district supported a $20 million tax proposal.
Selvaggio said the union is talking to state legislators to gain support for the proposals, but was facing opposition from some Republican members of the Coastal Caucus.
