My cat Classy has shared my pillow, and twice put her paw on my neck. I have been debating contacting a news reporter in town and going to the court house. I would like to testify how religious institutions have been playing a “shell game”. I talked to an attorney two months ago.
John ‘The New Francsiscan’
“What all of you are doing now is not helping me understand the actual relationship any better than it being perhaps more of a shell game,” Kasubhai said.”
“The idea that … he has no idea how this organizational structure is set up defies logic and credibility,” Kasubhai said.
Chapman said he doesn’t plan to relocate to Oregon but will have final authority over hiring, scheduling and clinical oversight. He said he plans to rely on local physician leaders to help him.”
Controversial ER takeover sounds like possible ‘shell game,’ judge says
- Updated: May. 01, 2026, 6:31 a.m.
- |Published: May. 01, 2026, 6:30 a.m.
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A frustrated federal judge this week appeared skeptical that PeaceHealth’s plan to hire a national contractor to help run its three ERs in Oregon meets the state’s toughest-in-the-U.S. ban on corporate practice of medicine.
But U.S. District Judge Mustafa Kasubhai said it’s hard to tell because so many details around the transition remain murky.
Over three days of testimony, Kasubhai pressed witnesses on basic but elusive points: who will actually hold authority, who will make key decisions affecting patient care and what written agreements spell out the roles and boundaries of the companies and physicians involved.
Kasubhai must decide who ultimately is in charge of patient care if the out-of-state company takes over from a local doctors group that has staffed the emergency rooms for more than three decades.
That’s crucial because an Oregon law passed last year cracks down on non-medical companies exerting control over how medical practices are run – even behind the scenes – to make sure doctors stay in charge of patient care.
At times, the testimony appeared to test the judge’s patience.
“What all of you are doing now is not helping me understand the actual relationship any better than it being perhaps more of a shell game,” Kasubhai said.
Georgia-based staffing firm ApolloMD and its newly formed Oregon practice, Lane Emergency Physicians, are poised to take over the ERs at PeaceHealth’s Cottage Grove Community Medical Center and Peace Harbor Medical Center in Florence on June 1 and then the ER at Sacred Heart at RiverBend Medical Center in Springfield in July.
But Eugene Emergency Physicians, the contractor for 35 years, sued to block the transition. Plaintiffs also include one of its doctors, Dr. Dan McGee, and a Lane County parent whose child has received emergency care locally. They argue ApolloMD’s staffing model violates Oregon’s law and has been pushed forward too quickly, potentially putting patients at risk.
ApolloMD employs a model increasingly used in healthcare: The company would handle business operations — recruiting, scheduling, billing and analytics — while it forms a separate, physician-owned practice, Lane Emergency Physicians, to employ doctors and oversee patients.
Witnesses for PeaceHealth and ApolloMD said that setup is standard and legal. Their attorneys argued that Oregon Senate Bill 951 allows companies to handle administrative work as long as physicians care for the patients.
The judge said industry norms won’t decide the case.
He repeatedly told lawyers that Oregon’s new law may have changed the rules — and that his job isn’t to weigh policy arguments or fix strained emergency rooms, but to determine whether the arrangement crosses a legal line.
Kasubhai pressed Dr. Yogin Patel, the CEO of ApolloMD, on basic questions and wondered aloud if ApolloMD’s layered corporate structure obscures accountability.
Patel testified that Lane Emergency Physicians would operate the practice while ApolloMD would get a management fee for administrative support. Payments from PeaceHealth, he said, would flow to the physician group, which would pay clinicians and then compensate ApolloMD.
Patel acknowledged that ApolloMD is already deeply involved in building the operation, including recruiting physicians, staffing and compensation. He insisted, however, that the company wouldn’t control clinical decisions.
Patel, who lives in North Carolina, said he expects to work shifts as a practicing emergency doctor for Lane Emergency Physicians, even as he continues to serve as ApolloMD’s chief executive. He conceded that he has not yet signed his own independent contractor agreement.
The sole owner of Lane Emergency Physicians, Dr. Johne Philip Chapman of Chicago,
struggled to explain the new practice’s structure, prompting a sharp retort from the judge.
“The idea that … he has no idea how this organizational structure is set up defies logic and credibility,” Kasubhai said.
Chapman said he doesn’t plan to relocate to Oregon but will have final authority over hiring, scheduling and clinical oversight. He said he plans to rely on local physician leaders to help him.
But he confirmed that he doesn’t have a finalized operating agreement spelling out how Lane Emergency Physicians will make decisions or a signed contract with PeaceHealth. Financial terms are still under negotiation, he said.
At the same time, he said, roughly 50 to 60 physicians have signed contracts and that draft schedules for June are already in place.
At several points, Kasubhai suggested the evidence on both sides is still incomplete as he pressed attorneys to focus on concrete facts rather than hypotheticals.
“I’m frankly quite frustrated with how this evidence is developing,” he said at one point. “The plausible deniability that seems to be built into these witnesses’ responses is discouraging, disappointing.”
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He also floated the idea that the parties might be better served by finding a compromise, suggesting uncertainty about whether the current record is strong enough to support a clear ruling.
For now, the central question remains unresolved: Does ApolloMD’s role amount to permissible administrative support or does it cross into the kind of control that Oregon law prohibits.
The hearing is set to continue next week, with several key witnesses still to testify. They include Denise Gideon, a PeaceHealth official who oversaw the emergency department staffing bids, Dr. Kim Ruscher, the organization’s chief medical officer in Oregon, and Raleigh Chisholm, a nursing administrator.
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