This map depicts the size and location of hospitals and nursing homes relative to Oregon's urban population. There are approximately 57 hospitals and 120 nursing homes in Oregon distributed over 36 counties.

The urban population in Oregon is concentrated along the Interstate 5 corridor (which runs north to south through the western side of the State), along the Pacific coast, and in a few smaller cities in the eastern portion of the State. Although a few counties are mostly urban, most have large tracts of primarily rural land, partially because of the presence of the Cascade Mountain Range, which bisects the State and has been designated national forest, and the large farming industry in the eastern half of the State. In addition, most of the hospitals and nursing home facilities in the State are located along major transportation networks, although a few small community hospitals are in remote rural areas.

Although all of the urban centers appear to have a large number of hospitals and nursing homes, people living in primarily rural areas may have difficulty accessing care. With the exception of a few small hospitals in largely rural areas, most hospitals in Oregon appear to be near a nursing home.

These maps provide a closer look at two of Oregon's large urban centers, Portland and Salem. Portland, at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia Rivers bordering Washington in the northwest corner of the State, is by far Oregon's largest city. Salem, the State capital, is significantly smaller and located about 45 miles south of Portland along the Interstate 5 corridor. As in the State-level map, the percentage of the population living in an urban area on the city maps is displayed by census tract as are the size and location of nursing homes and hospitals. These smaller city maps are useful for looking at the distribution of resources in areas with a high density of nursing homes and hospitals.

Portland is the most heavily bedded city, with 10 hospitals (including two Level 1 Trauma Centers) and over 40 nursing homes. Many of the nursing homes in Portland are quite large, with over 200 beds per facility. Salem has significantly fewer resources than Portland, with only one large hospital and five nursing homes, two of which are larger than 200 beds. Salem, located amid farming communities, serves a large rural community.

Hazardous materials (HAZMAT) response in Oregon is organized into 15 regions. These regions are not organized by county; rather, they are based on the boundaries used by city fire departments and rural fire department districts (RFPDs). As such, they often follow transportation routes, such as smaller State highways, and geographic features, such as rivers, mountains and high desert, and large forested areas. All regions but one (Astoria in the northwest corner) include more than one county or portions of counties. HAZMAT regions in Oregon tend to cover smaller areas when they include larger urban centers, such as Portland, Eugene, and Salem, and larger areas in forested or farming communities.

Trauma services are coordinated by Area Trauma Advisory Boards (ATABs) across the State. All ATABs cover multiple counties, although six counties (Tillamook, Linn, Wasco, Curry, Klamath, and Morrow) are split between two ATABs. These counties were split into different ATAB Regions based on patient flow/transportation patterns and geographic features, such as rivers and mountains. Oregon originally had nine ATAB Regions consecutively numbered. Since their inception, ATAB Regions 4 and 8 were combined with adjacent regions, and the regions were never renumbered. Many of the ATAB Regions are split by Health Resources and Services Administration Bioterrorism (HRSA BT) Regions (called Hospital Bioterrorism Preparedness Program Regions in Oregon) because of geographic features. For example, Curry County in the southwest corner of the State is split between ATAB Regions 3 and 5 but is wholly included in one of the HRSA BT regions because transportation along the coast is easier than over the mountains.

Emergency medical services (EMS) are organized by county in Oregon and, as such, are not regionalized. Each county is responsible for developing and implementing an Ambulance Service Area (ASA) plan, which includes dispatch, ambulance response times, disaster response, and hospital coordination and patient transfers for all participating entities in the county. ASAs must include the entire county, although mutual aid agreements often exist between contiguous counties, specifically in the case of urban areas that border two or more counties. However, ATABs review and support the implementation of the ASA plans for the counties in their region. Thus, for the sake of simplification, this Atlas organizes Oregon's EMS regions according to ATAB boundaries because there is a high level of EMS coordination between counties in each region.

There is currently no regionalization of emergency management activities in Oregon, and much of this activity is county based. ATABs have some responsibility for disaster coordination and injury prevention efforts in the region, although this is focused on trauma services and hospital coordination.

This map highlights counties containing nursing homes that are strategically located in rural areas with no hospital. Only one county in Oregon has a nursing home and no hospital: Columbia, in the northwest corner of the State. The county is largely rural, and the lack of a hospital there could be due, in part, to the county's close proximity to Portland, which has a large number of hospitals, including several tertiary care facilities. The nursing home in Columbia County has approximately 100 beds, suggesting that it could be used for surge capacity. Five counties in the eastern portion of the State (mostly farming communities) have no nursing homes at all, while three counties (largely national forests and prairie) have no hospital or nursing home facilities.

This map looks at areas with nursing homes and no hospitals relative to the Red Cross chapters operating in Oregon. There are seven Red Cross chapters in the State, and all serve multicounty regions. The county in northwest Oregon with a nursing home and no hospital is served by the same chapter that serves the metropolitan Portland area. In addition, one county in the eastern portion of the State is served by the Idaho Red Cross.

This map examines the size and location of nursing homes and hospitals relative to the distribution of the population aged 65 or older in ATAB Region 1, which has 15 hospitals, 4 of which are operated by Providence Health System, and 49 nursing homes. A majority of these facilities are in Multnomah County, which includes the city of Portland, and the surrounding suburban communities in Clackamas and Washington Counties. Multnomah County also has a higher concentration of census tracts with a low proportion of elderly persons when compared with the two coastal communities in the region. Clackamas County, which contains several of Portland's suburbs to the south, has four hospitals and nine nursing homes, but all are in the very northwest corner of the county. Columbia County has no hospital and one nursing home, while the two coastal counties have small hospitals and few nursing homes.

The population pyramid shows a bubble in the population between the ages of 25 and 49, suggesting a younger professional population. However, growth of the population as a whole is fairly stable.

This map examines the size and location of nursing homes and hospitals relative to the distribution of the population aged 65 or older for ATAB Region 2, which has a total of 11 hospitals, 1 of which is operated by Providence Health Systems, and 24 nursing homes. These resources are located, for the most part, in the cities of Salem and Corvallis along the Interstate 5 corridor. The Cascade Mountain Range runs through the eastern portion of Linn and Marion Counties (the two eastern counties), so much of the land is national and State forestland and sparsely populated. Two small hospitals are located in coastal Lincoln County, each of which is associated with a small nursing home. In general, the population in and around the urban centers in this region is younger than the population living in the coastal communities.

The population pyramid shows a relatively stable population with little growth. There are two small bubbles in the population: one among 35 to 55 year olds and another for 15 to 24 year olds. The large number of 15 to 24 year olds may be due to the presence of several large universities in this region.

This map examines the size and location of nursing homes and hospitals relative to the distribution of the population aged 65 or older in ATAB Region 3, which contains 9 hospitals and 19 nursing homes. The region contains three full counties and small portions of two additional counties (Curry and Linn), and the largest population center is the city of Eugene, located in the middle of the region. A majority of the eastern portion of this region is national forestland in the Cascade Mountain Range. Hospital and nursing homes are concentrated, for the most part, along the Interstate 5 corridor and in several small coastal communities. Census tracts along the coast appear to have a higher concentration of elderly persons, while census tracts around the urban centers appear to have a higher proportion of younger people.

The population in this region is small and stable, with little population growth. The population pyramid shows two bubbles: the 10- to 24-year-old population and the 35- to 54-year-old population, suggesting the presence of college-age individuals and families with children.

This map examines the size and location of nursing homes and hospitals relative to the distribution of the population aged 65 or older in ATAB Region 5, which has 6 hospitals, 1 of which is operated by Providence Health System, and 12 nursing homes spread across four counties. Curry County, the westernmost county in the region, is split between ATAB Regions 3 and 5 and Klamath County, the easternmost county, is split between ATAB Regions 7 and 5. There are several small urban centers in this region (Grants Pass, Medford, and Klamath Falls) in which the majority of the hospital and nursing home resources are located. Much of this region is rural and sparsely populated; it includes the Cascade Mountain Range and a significant amount of national forestland (the Siskiyou National Forest). All of the hospitals in this region are small, although all the counties have at least one nursing home and hospital. Census tracts in Curry County have a higher proportion of elderly persons than the other counties in the region.

The population pyramid shows a small stable population with two bubbles: the 5 to 19 year olds and the 35 to 54 year olds, suggesting the presence of families with children.

This map examines the size and location of nursing homes and hospitals relative to the distribution of the population aged 65 or older in ATAB Region 6. This region consists of three counties and portions of two counties, all of which are largely rural farmland and national forest. Wasco County is split between ATAB Regions 6 and 7, and a small sliver of Morrow County is included in Region 6, while the majority is in Region 9. The Cascade Mountain Range runs along the western portion of the region, and the major population centers are along the Columbia River bordering on the north. There are only two hospitals in this region, one of which is operated by Providence Health System, and four nursing homes. The nursing home and hospital resources are located in the cities of Hood River and The Dalles. No hospitals or nursing homes are located in three of the counties in this region: Gilliam, Morrow, and Sherman.

The census tracts in all four counties have approximately the same proportion of elderly persons, although Hood River appears to have a smaller proportion than the other counties. The population pyramid shows a very small population with stable growth.

This map examines the size and location of nursing homes and hospitals relative to the distribution of the population aged 65 or older in ATAB Region 7. This large region is in the eastern portion of Oregon and consists of seven counties and portions of two additional counties (Klamath and Wasco). There are seven hospitals and six nursing homes in the region, located in small urban centers connected through the State highway system. This is a largely rural area consisting of farmland and national forest. All nine counties have approximately the same proportion of elderly persons, although Wheeler County in the northeast corner of the region appears to have a higher proportion of elderly persons than other counties.

The population pyramid shows a relatively small population that is fairly stable in terms of population growth. There are two bubbles in the population: the 5- to 19-year-old population and the 35- to 54- year-old population, suggesting the presence of families with children.

This map examines the size and location of nursing homes and hospitals relative to the location of the population aged 65 or older region in ATAB Region 9. This region has seven hospitals and six nursing homes spanning six counties that are largely rural farmland, high desert, or national forest and are sparsely populated. Most of the area's facilities are located along the I-84 corridor and in the small urban centers of Pendleton and Baker City, although there are two small rural hospitals in the northern counties of the region. Each county has at least one hospital, while three of the six have no nursing homes.

The population pyramid shows a small stable population with two bubbles—the 5- to 19-year-old population and the 35- to 49- year-old population—suggesting the presence of families with children.

The population pyramid shows a small stable population with two bubbles—the 5- to 19-year-old population and the 35- to 49- year-old population—suggesting the presence of families with children.