08/12/2026
A PERSONAL MESSAGE FROM DR. STEVEN TERSIGNI:
To my friends, patients, neighbors, and community,
For more than 30 years, I have had the privilege of practicing medicine in this community and being part of North Bend Medical Center. Many of you reading this have been my patients. I have cared for your families, watched children grow into adults, and gotten to know many of you not just as patients, but as friends and neighbors.
It has been one of the great privileges of my life.
When I came to this community as a physician, North Bend Medical Center gave me the opportunity to build a practice, raise a family, work alongside wonderful colleagues, and care for people in a place that I came to love. I have received far more from this community than I could ever give back.
Today, I have a different responsibility as CEO of North Bend Medical Center, but I am still a physician at heart. And my commitment to this community has not changed.
I know there have been questions and concerns about North Bend Medical Center and our financial health. I understand those concerns, and I believe you deserve to hear directly from me about where we are and where we are going.
We do have financial challenges. Like many independent medical organizations, we have been affected by rising costs, workforce shortages, increasing complexity in healthcare, and reimbursement that has not kept pace with the cost of providing care.
I will not minimize those challenges. But neither should we lose sight of what North Bend Medical Center has built and what we have the opportunity to preserve.
North Bend Medical Center is open. We are caring for patients every day. And we are actively working to build a stronger and more sustainable future.
We have an extraordinary group of physicians and advanced practice providers, dedicated employees, important medical services, and a relationship with this community that has been built over generations.
We are taking a careful look at every part of our organization—how we operate, how we use our resources, where we can become more efficient, and how we can strengthen the services our community needs most.
And we are not doing this alone.
We are working closely with our community healthcare partners, including the hospital and SWOIPA, to look for opportunities to work together and strengthen healthcare throughout our region. I believe our future will depend increasingly upon local healthcare organizations working collaboratively rather than trying to solve every challenge independently.
There is another reason this work is deeply personal to me.
I want the young physician or advanced practice provider who comes to our community today to have the same opportunity I had 30 years ago.
I want them to discover what I discovered—that this is a wonderful place to practice medicine, to raise a family, to know your patients personally, and to make a difference in people’s lives.
I want them to build careers here.
I want them to stay here.
And someday, I hope they can look back after 20 or 30 years and feel the same gratitude toward North Bend Medical Center and this community that I feel today.
That is one of the reasons I accepted the responsibility of helping lead NBMC through this period. This isn’t simply about balancing a budget or improving a financial statement. It is about making sure that high-quality healthcare continues to exist here at home for the next generation.
There will be difficult decisions along the way. I cannot promise that everything will remain exactly as it has been, nor should it.
Healthcare is changing, and NBMC must change with it.
What I can promise is that we will confront our challenges directly, make thoughtful decisions, work with our community partners, and keep the long-term healthcare needs of this community at the center of what we do.
I have spent more than 30 years caring for people here. I know how much North Bend Medical Center means to this community because I know how much it means to me.
I believe deeply that NBMC is worth fighting for. And I believe its best days can still be ahead of us.
Thank you for the trust you have placed in me as your physician over the years, for the trust you continue to place in the providers and employees of North Bend Medical Center, and for the support you have shown this organization.
My hope is that the next generation of providers will someday be able to say what I can say today: coming to this community and becoming part of North Bend Medical Center was one of the best decisions I ever made.
With gratitude,
Steven Tersigni, MD, CEO
North Bend Medical Center
