Medication-assisted treatment center Equinox Clinics closes abruptly 8%
By Hannarose McGuinness28%
8/2/2026, 4:01:48 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 13 faulty reasoning types, including Appeal to Emotion, Anecdotal, and Negativity Bias, with Hasty Generalization as the most egregious example at 9.1% saturation with 248 hits. Analysis detected 1,325 faulty-reasoning hits from 2,730 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 20.4% and a BS Rank of 8% (23,289 of 25,294 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 92.10% of the article peer group.
A medication-assisted treatment center in Eugene closed suddenly, leaving patients scrambling to continue their care in the trepidatious world of addiction medicine and recovery.
Equinox Clinics, previously located at 160 E. 18th Ave., closed after a physician associate practicing there received a notice of proposed disciplinary action from the Oregon Medical Board on April 16.
The center’s listing on Mental Health Providers, a directory of care resources, said Equinox Clinics “offers structured outpatient care for people working to overcome opioid or alcohol dependence” by providing medication-assisted treatment using Suboxone, Sublocade and Vivitrol “to reduce cravings and support long-term recovery.”
In April, the Oregon Medical Board issued Equinox Clinics Owner Morio “Rio” McWilliams a Notice of Proposed Disciplinary Action alleging violations of Oregon’s Medical Practice Act.
The notice cites repeated acts of negligence in the practice of medicine; gross negligence in the practice of medicine; unprofessional or dishonorable conduct; and violation of a Board order.
The notice is a preliminary and no final action has been taken.
McWilliams has a Physician Associate license with the practice location matching Equinox Clinics’ office address.
He earned his Bachelor of Science in 2010 from the University of Washington MEDEX Northwest medical school in Seattle.
McWilliams, who also goes by the first name Rio on business and property records, dissolved the Equinox Clinics LLC on July 2, according to Oregon Secretary of State filings.
The business was organized in 2019.
The office’s phone number drops calls immediately, the clinic’s website doesn’t load and its Facebook page has been cleared.
Equinox Clinics also had satellite locations in Albany and Lincoln City.
The Lincoln City location last served patients in May 2024.
According to the Oregon Health Authority, opioid addiction is one of the state’s most pressing public health issues and Medication-Assisted Treatment, or MAT, “is a medically monitored therapeutic intervention designed to assist opiate dependent individuals improve their overall quality of life and begin the recovery process that involves case management, counseling and medication management.”
Patients left to pick up the pieces after sudden Equinox Clinics closure
A Facebook post from a long-time client of Equinox Clinics raised questions about why the closure happened.
Zayne Sohlberg said he had been going to Equinox Clinics for several years to see McWilliams, who he referred to as a doctor.
He said he had his monthly appointment scheduled, received a reminder call the day before, and when he showed up for his appointment on July 14, things were off.
“The building was almost empty and there were a few workers there cleaning out the place,” Sohlberg wrote.
“One of the gentlemen told me that the building had been gone through bye [sic] the DEA- [sic] (Drug Enforcement Administration) he didn’t say when and I was pretty confused in that moment and forgot to ask any follow up [sic] questions.”
He said he recalled having to complete his monthly appointment over the phone in June because an office staff member told him Equinox Clinics didn’t have a building or office space at the time, but didn’t remember the reason why.
“The service they provided is life saving [sic] for many many people in the community, and for them to shut down - whatever the reason might be - with no notice to the dozens, if not hundreds of people who are physically dependent on these medications, is quite concerning,” Sohlberg wrote.
“I feel very thankful that I am stable enough (and have enough medication to hopefully last until I can see a new provider) to react accordingly, but for many people in early recovery this could be very destabilizing and if the DEA or any other federal agency really did shut them down, it seems unethical to not notify as many of the patients as possible as soon as possible.”
The Register-Guard reached out to the DEA and the Department of Justice (DOJ) to confirm if Equinox Clinics is or was under investigation by the federal agencies, but did not receive responses before publication.
Attempts to reach McWilliams were unsuccessful.
Controversy and investigations abound at Equinox Clinics
In 2024, McWilliams was sued by former business partner and fellow physician assistant Randall Kelly.
The complaint, filed in Lane County Circuit Court, said starting in 2023, the partners began having disputes over the operation of Equinox Clinics.
Kelly also became concerned about McWilliams’ medical record charting.
The complaint alleged McWilliams exhibited a pattern of concerning behavior that included the apparent copying and pasting of chart notes and patients’ vital signs across visits rather than charting new notes.
The complaint said McWilliams disregarded Kelly's concerns and continued the charting pattern.
Kelly also alleged “McWilliams was not providing proper care to patients, including prescribing controlled substances for patients who had evidence of not taking the medication, prescribing treatment medication for patients when not clinically indicated, administering expired medication to patients, and improperly administering medication against FDA and DEA guidelines.”
Kelly also voiced concerns that McWilliams was not addressing the potential for drug diversions.
The complaint said McWilliams ignored those concerns too.
A former medical assistant at Equinox Clinics, who asked to remain anonymous out of fear of retaliation, said in the early years, they were excited about the work the clinic was doing to address a growing problem in the community.
As time went on, they saw practices they said were morally wrong and at times illegal.
They said they witnessed medical assistants putting fake vital signs into patients’ charts at McWilliams' direction and McWilliams administering medications when a patient’s blood alcohol content would usually mean they shouldn’t be given medications that could mix poorly.
They said they saw “a lot of shortcuts, not paying attention, more mistakes than I can count,” in their time working at Equinox Clinics.
“We were really concerned about patient safety.
People were getting piss poor care,” the former employee said.
“...
“Obviously what comes first for us is the patients because it’s such a vulnerable community of people.
We’re supposed to be helping and I think at some point, he was just helping himself.”
They said McWilliams was reported to the Oregon Medical Board in 2023 and also was reported to the DEA and the DOJ.
They felt if the Oregon Medical Board had acted on McWilliams’ case faster, the clinic's abrupt closure wouldn't have happened.
They said the closure of the clinic is worrisome, as the medications distributed by the clinic are not the kind a patient should abruptly stop taking.
They now work at a different clinic that is seeing former Equinox Clinics patients.
They said a lot of those new patients have stayed clean for two or three years but admitted they were “on a slippery slope to relapse” because of the closure.
“People, especially when they’re new into recovery, they have to be on sort of a tight leash.
And then who suffers but the patients?”
they said.
“I wonder how many patients have been hurt.
I don’t want to imagine, but it’s just ugly, ugly and it needs to stop.”
They alleged McWilliams had an inappropriate relationship with a patient who was hired as office staff and disregarded the concerns other workers brought up.
Former receptionist: 'A severely devastating loss for the community'
Riley Stutz, the former front desk receptionist at Equinox Clinics, also said McWilliams had an inappropriate relationship with a former patient who was then hired onto the staff.
She said the business had no human resources department, so when colleagues raised concerns, they were never addressed.
She worked at Equinox Clinics from September 2021 to May 2024.
She said addiction medicine is close to her heart and she joined the clinic to do good for the community.
She said the clinic was exploiting patients for financial gain.
She said patient complaints about their bills were “always prevalent,” and said a patient came into the clinic with an overdue bill for $12,000.
She said the codes used to identify provider services and bill patients were wrong and when she asked McWilliams why, he said the clinic bills “for everything for every single visit,” then didn’t elaborate.
“He never had an appropriate biller.
I don’t know exactly who he was using.
It seems like a third party, like a friend of a friend who doesn’t mind flubbing some numbers, is how it felt, because that many people are complaining about their bill being wrong,” Stutz said.
“That many people are saying, ‘Hey, I talked to my insurance and all these codes are wrong.’”
Stutz said patients couldn’t understand why they were billed so much for such short visits.
“People would wait for hours to be seen for less than five minutes, even,” she said.
As the front desk receptionist, Stutz said she had to field angry calls from pharmacists and patients.
She said a pharmacist who dealt with numerous mistakes called the office and asked, “Is your provider really that stupid that he can’t do math?
Should I come over there with a calendar and a calculator since you guys clearly don’t know how to do your job?”
She said McWilliams would apologize and insist he would fix the problem, but then inevitably, an incorrect prescription would be sent out again.
“It felt like the firing squad on the messenger.
If it wasn’t the pharmacy being frustrated at me because of Rio’s miscalculations, it would be patients who are very sick, they’re very much not feeling well and typically, when you’re in the beginning of withdrawals and you need your medication, you don’t care how nice the receptionist is,” Stutz said.
“I was having people tell me to go kill myself.
They would blame me for them possibly overdosing and dying because of Rio’s mistakes.”
Stutz said after coworkers raised concerns that never got addressed, they didn’t know what else to do.
She said colleagues worried about what patients would do if the office staff quit.
“Unfortunately, that’s what it came down to: we all left in 2024, but clearly, it was at the sacrifice of the patients’ well-being,” Stutz said.
She called the clinic’s closure “a severely devastating loss for the community” because Equinox had a good name and trajectory when it opened.
She said in the beginning, people were sharing the clinic as a resource, clientele was growing and patient feedback indicated the staff was authentic, understanding, kind and going above and beyond for clients.
“I’ve chased people down the street to get to them to get them back in for an appointment.
We really, really cared and then for it to close down that suddenly, I think for one, it puts a really bad glare on addiction medicine, especially in our area because we have a really high population of houseless people and people suffering from substance use disorder,” Stutz said.
“So for that to close so abruptly and then, I mean, everybody there is affected.”
She said the sudden closure looks “glaringly bad on the addiction community’s support system” when those seeking addiction treatment need empathy, compassion, reassurance and resources.
“Typically, for a lot of people, when that sort of abrupt loss happens, their first inclination is, ‘I either need to get my medication or I have to get a fix,’” Stutz said.
“Most people don’t have that in between, like, ‘Where’s my coping mechanism?’”
Lab manager: 'It’s disgusting to take advantage of that population'
Kira Tchack was the lab manager at Equinox from April 2021 to April of 2025.
She said she was fired after her paid medical leave was approved because she was diagnosed with breast cancer.
“He decided that I no longer needed to work for the company,” Tchack said.
“An old coworker had said — I didn’t hear this, this was just what I was told — that he was going to let me go because he didn’t know how long I would last.”
Tchack said she was passionate about addiction medicine because she was a patient herself at Equinox Clinics, working with a different provider.
In her time as an employee, she said she saw Rio flirt with patients and staff, heard from a patient that he had slapped her on the butt, he would let untrained staff administer injections and hired a patient who became the office manager then entered into an inappropriate relationship with her.
“I was the compliance officer and so I had to stop things like Rio trying to give expired medicine.
… I was there for four years and I witnessed a lot."
She said, “It’s disgusting to take advantage of that population,” and said she was surprised the clinic stayed open as long as it did.
“These are people who, not only the medication but the routine, they’re building their life back up.
… I feel like it was more because I lived that life that I cared and it wasn’t about the money for me,” Tchack said.
“As a patient-slash-employee, it was really hard sometimes to see him just kind of breeze through.
We had patients that would be there for three years and he thinks they were new every time because he wasn’t putting in the real effort with each patient that he should.“
Provider: What a supportive addiction medicine environment should look like
Kelly, McWilliams' former business partner, is now owner and associate medical director at New Life Wellness, a clinic providing addiction treatment services.
He started seeing patients under its banner in mid-2024 after leaving Equinox Clinics.
His traveling practice serves patients in Eugene, Corvallis, Newport, Lincoln City, South Beach, Dallas, Stayton, Bend, Portland and Hermiston.
He travels to communities as needed and gives patients his cell phone number.
He said being “a phone call away” means he can help patients immediately when they have issues with pharmacies or need to talk with him during a crisis.
Kelly said meeting people where they are with compassion and empathy is the key to fostering recovery.
He said the most important message he imparted to a recent patient struggling with relapse was that nobody is perfect.
He said if somebody is sober for five years and relapses, those years of sobriety aren't erased.
“I believe that perfection does not exist in this life.
Unless somebody is walking on water and raising people from the dead, no one is perfect,” Kelly said.
“I think it's critical to really reinforce that, especially in the context of relapse, and that it happens.
And the key thing I've seen is: What do you do now?”
He said addiction is a disease that often can’t wait, so being as available as possible helps him serve his patients when they need him most.
In his decade working in addiction treatment, he said treatment options have adapted as different drugs become more commonplace.
“I feel somewhat like an old steward because I've seen the world sort of shift from heroin being the predominant opioid or substance of abuse to fentanyl,” Kelly said.
“I had to learn that what I would do for someone struggling with heroin was very different than the fentanyl epidemic that's ravaging the country.”
He said he sees more patients seeking treatment these days and that’s a good thing.
He said when he was growing up on the west side of Detroit in the 1980s, there was a deeply ingrained stigma around the cocaine epidemic, both in society and in clinical medicine.
“I think medicine and society at large has removed the stigma associated with substance abuse,” Kelly said.
“...
Unfortunately, there are countless people that have suffered and that have lost their life in this war, so to speak.”
When Kelly learned about the sudden closure of Equinox Clinics, he felt the need to let people know about other addiction treatment resources in town, such as Revitalized Wellness, a clinic that offers medication-assisted treatment.
He said without treatment medicines, patients can experience withdrawal symptoms ranging from sweats and chills, to restlessness and irritability, to seizures and feeling like they’re going to die.
He said it’s “abhorrent” to put patients in a situation where they might not have reliable access to their treatment medications.
“It's about serving the community regardless of what happens with any other organization,” Kelly said.
“My agenda is to do what's best for the patient and to incorporate what the patient's desires are.”
Hannarose McGuinness is The Register-Guard’s growth and development reporter.
You can reach her at hmcguinness@registerguard.com.
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