EAU CLAIRE — The Chippewa Valley has had its share of experience with the loss of industry, with notable losses being seen in the area’s former lumber industry and the closure of Uniroyal’s Eau Claire location.
Yet, despite these setbacks, the region has consistently managed to recover. This resilience is perhaps why the phoenix, a symbol of rebirth, frequently appears in the iconography around Eau Claire.
After the announcement of the imminent closures of the two local Hospital Sisters Health System hospitals and the existing Prevea medical facilities in the area, other local hospitals and individuals strove to close the gaps in healthcare that were to follow. The Mayo Clinic in Eau Claire worked to increase the capacity of its birth center, as well as strived to expand emergency and urgent care departments in response to the closures. OakLeaf Clinic stepped up as they started offering oncology services. The medical group also opened two urgent cares in Eau Claire and in Menomonie, and has started clinics in Rice Lake, Ladysmith and Cornell.
However, there is only so much the currently existing hospitals can provide, and this is where the Chippewa Valley Health Cooperative has stepped in.
“It was obviously very immediately recognized, throughout the entire region, that we’re going to need a new hospital— a new health care provider — here. On February 29, local business community leaders formed this cooperative to get started as fast as possible,” said Lee Caraher, one of the members of the Cooperative. “The reason speed was so important is, if you wait to figure out what’s going on, you are too late.”
Caraher explained that their planned community hospital would be owned and governed by the people of the Chippewa Valley, stressing that the decisions of the hospital should be made by people who work and live in the area, rather than from out of state.
Another member of the cooperative, Mike Sanders, said this was a response to the losses that the Chippewa Valley has seen from its healthcare landscape.
“After the action of the closures, we asked: how come people in Springfield (IL, the location of HSHS headquarters) can determine our healthcare futures?” asked Sanders. “We wanted to be a 100 percent contrast with that, and that’s where we came up with the cooperative structure to be locally governed, with local decisions.”
He clarified that, in the last full year that the two former hospitals were open, the hospitals together accrued 22,000 ER visits, with an average of 125 hospitalized patients daily and 770 newborn deliveries during the year. The hospitals together also had a higher proportion of Medicaid patients.
“Sacred Heart and St. Joe’s piece of the pie — depending on what you’re looking at — it’s 30 to 40 percent, so it’s not a trivial thing,” said Sanders. “The capacity of the existing hospitals — while they’ve tried to ramp things up — there’s just no way to replace this capacity.”
Sanders referenced patients having to be made to travel elsewhere for care. As seen in an article in the Wednesday edition of the Leader-Telegram, several patients described needing to get care in the Twin Cities, Wausau, La Crosse, Madison, and Rochester for care that was no longer available in the Chippewa Valley.
Caraher described the cooperative exploring several options for possible locations for the upcoming community hospital.
“The feasibility study is underway right now, and is expected in October,” said Caraher. The preliminary report the cooperative got about a week ago absolutely supports the new hospital, and that was about 50 percent done.”
Sanders said the Cooperative found difficulties trying to combat a healthcare loss this scale, as there seems to be no precedent for it anywhere else. The loss, he explained, was not just of healthcare but also of labor.
“There is no parallel; there are hospitals that have closed around the country lately in very small towns,” said Sanders, “but never a system that’s come in and canceled 1,400 jobs.”
“That’s a huge impact, especially now that we’re getting to the part where the severances (of former HSHS and Prevea systems) are over, and people have to decide if they’re staying in town. With this kind of thing, there isn’t a textbook.”
Bob Krause, chair of the Cooperative, shared his frustrations with trying to make offers for the now-abandoned HSHS buildings — if only temporarily. Such offers only received quick refusals or silence or from the HSHS headquarters in Springfield. Offers included for the St. Joseph’s campus and for leasing the cancer center at Sacred Heart in Eau Claire.
“The sisters who made the investment here did a wonderful job for 100 years, but we’re not getting full cooperation today from their current administration to help us bridge this void that we’re trying to within our communities,” said Krause. “We’ve been trying to work with the administration down in Springfield to come up with solutions that will help our community.”
Sanders said the Cooperative preferred to put focus on the positive, saying that discussions with state officials have yielded positive results. This includes officials offering the ability to fast-track as much as possible to bring the new hospital to fruition. This has just increased the Cooperative’s desire to make the future hospital a reality.
“What’s happening is that the board and the physician advisors meet every Wednesday, and the passion in that room — I wish there was a meter that could track that,” said Sanders. “Everyone is 100 percent focused on getting this done, and we’re going to make it happen, because it’s needed in the community.”
“We’re not trying to focus on the past — we can’t change that,” said Krause. “We’re trying to go forward in a positive way to provide a solution that’s going to be sustainable and meaningful for all the patients who have no home to go to — that’s our goal, and we’re going to accomplish that.
“I’m doing this for my friends and neighbors who live in the Chippewa Valley, because they’re experiencing such a lack of medical care in the area right now, and we can’t go fast enough for them.”
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