Asante Is Creating A Staffing Crisis By Refusing To Follow Nurses’ Contract And Oregon Law (Photo) - 01/06/26

MEDFORD, Ore. - A new policy at Asante Rogue Regional Medical Center (AARMC) is leaving hospital units short staffed and putting patients at risk as managers turn away nurses who are ready to work. In early December, Asante chief nursing officer (CNO) Julie Bowman and hospital administration began requiring nurses to sign away their rights to overtime or incentive pay when doing extra work to cover the hospital’s staffing shortages. 

As a result, dozens of nursing shifts are going unfilled every day—leading to real impacts for patients and the community. Over the holidays, Asante’s emergency department and neonatal intensive care unit were short significant numbers of staff and the IMCU/critical care unit was forced to close due to staffing shortages—requiring vulnerable patients to be relocated to other units.  

Asante’s contract with nurses outlines overtime and incentive compensation for nurses who volunteer for extra shifts to fill staffing shortages. However, Asante is now requiring registered nurses to sign a waiver giving up their legal and contractual rights to overtime and incentive pay before allowing nurses to fill critical vacancies.  

“Nurses are willing to sacrifice our personal time to be there for patients and families and fill the gaps in Asante’s schedule,” said Fred Katz, RN, ONA bargaining unit chair at Rogue Regional. “But we expect Asante to keep its word to healthcare workers who are going above and beyond. Asante needs to honor the contract incentives it agreed to for nurses willing to work extra shifts and ultimately hire more nurses so we can give the community the care it expects.” 

Requiring nurses to forfeit their rights goes against the hospital’s contract and raises serious moral questions about its commitment to safe staffing and patient safety. The Oregon Nurses Association (ONA) has filed a grievance, noting that nurse managers are knowingly violating agreed upon staffing plans. The grievance calls upon Asante to drop all practices and policies that create barriers to safe patient care and violate the nurse staffing law.

“The incentives were developed to encourage workers to fill in holes in the schedule ahead of time to assure safe staffing. In the last contract negotiations, ONA agreed to reduce incentives given some improvements in staffing post-Covid. Now, the hospital is making every effort to break their contractual obligation, even when staffing ratios are falling below the levels defined in the safe staffing law. Nurses should not be forced to accept unsafe staffing conditions or assignments in order to maintain a healthy profit margin for the hospital," said Katz. 

“Nurses will not forgo the hard fought for and earned benefits outlined in their contract. The hospital attorney can claim to interpret the law but nurses know their contract. We know what the hospital has agreed to, just like we know the verbiage of the staffing law. We do not leave these things to interpretation for profit taking as the hospital’s administration and lawyer has done repeatedly."

Local emergency room nurses are circulating a petition to Asante leadership highlighting their concerns about unsafe staffing in the ER and the effects of forcing workers to forfeit their rights to agreed-upon pay. The petition says in part:

“We are deeply concerned that staffing vacancies are being intentionally left open despite qualified staff offering to cover, despite our patient volumes being as high as they’ve ever been. We are also concerned that Asante is choosing not to hire nurses and emergency technician for positions that are open because of turnover, creating shadow vacancies that result in more open shifts ... We strongly urge leadership to address this issue promptly to mitigate patient safety risk” 

Nurses are concerned because short staffing puts patients at greater risk of harm, results in longer wait times and increases the chance of missed care along with accelerating healthcare provider burnout and turnover. 

If Asante continues refusing to fill vacancies with willing nurses, it will continue violating hospital staffing plans and incurring financial penalties. The Oregon Health Authority (OHA) has repeatedly investigated Asante for staffing violations and found 125 staffing law violations and counting since June 5, 2025. OHA has proposed fining ARRMC more than $34,000 for staffing law violations that occurred in June 2025 alone. OHA is expted to assess additional penalties as it completes its work on complaints from July to the present.  

ONA represents more than 1200 registered nurses working at ARRMC. It is the only critical access hospital for hundreds of miles and serves rural communities from the South Coast to Northern California. In early December, Asante announced it was turning Ashland Community Hospital into a satellite campus and eliminating inpatient admissions and the birth center. The change will force more patients to travel to Medford for care and increase the strain on the current workforce. Asante says the changes are needed to ensure financial stability, but in 2024 the hospital made more than $64 million. 

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