Exploring Services Across Our Community
General Surgery

Why This Program?

Samaritan aims to better serve the community with improvements to our General Surgery program. We are working to meet the growing patient demand by utilizing our operating rooms more effectively. It is also important to address the impact of the heavy burden of being on-call for our surgeons and their teams.

What’s Being Explored

Samaritan clinicians, leaders and analysts are exploring all aspects of the General Surgery program. They are considering improvements such as:

  • Improving access and increasing surgical availability.
  • Implementing a single systemwide practice.
  • Allowing surgeons to focus more on specialty areas.
  • Providing centralized referral and scheduling support.
  • Reducing night and weekend call coverage from five hospitals to three.

2024 Data & Demographics

Clinical Statistics

  • 21,500 clinic visits.
  • 4,700 surgical cases.
  • 830 hospital admissions.
  • 4,700 surgical cases at Samaritan hospitals.
    • Of which the following were inpatient:
      • Good Samaritan Regional Medical Center: 575
      • Samaritan Albany General Hospital: 217
      • Samaritan Lebanon Community Hospital: 87
      • Samaritan Pacific Communities Hospital: 109
      • Samaritan North Lincoln Hospital: 44

Surgical cases on weekday evenings (6 p.m. – 6 a.m.) and weekends:

  • Samaritan North Lincoln Hospital: 10 across 251 weekday nights, 40 on weekends.
  • Samaritan Lebanon Community Hospital:  38 across 251 weekday nights, 66 on weekends.

Staffing

  • 15 general surgeons currently employed. 
  • According to the American Association of Medical Colleges, additional general surgeons are needed to fully serve our community. 
  • To ensure coverage, many of our surgeons are routinely on call one of every two or three days. 
  • Call burden negatively impacts recruitment and retention.
  • Often no patient needs arise. This results in on-call expense with no direct revenue.
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