Answers to Questions About the Chippewa Valley Health Cooperative

The Chippewa Valley Health Cooperative is a Wisconsin 193 cooperative created to improve access to affordable healthcare in the Chippewa Valley. The Cooperative expects to receive a 501c3 tax exempt status from the IRS. The Cooperative is considering all different types of services, programs, and facility options to fill the gaps that will be left by HSHS exiting Western Wisconsin – everything is on the table including an independent, community hospital.

The CVHC was formed six weeks after HSHS announced it was leaving the region, because we understand we need to move quickly to put the cooperative in place now, so that we can help avoid the devasting experience that other regions have had after losing so many primary care services and hospital beds. We can’t wait to see what happens to plan for the future; we need to take action now to make sure that the region has access to the healthcare it needs to thrive.

HSHS’s decision to exit Western Wisconsin as closed both Sacred Heart and St. Joseph’s hospitals which together had 292 staffed hospital beds, and all Prevea Clinics which served over 45,000 patients across a wide area of Western Wisconsin. With the HSHS exit over 1,400 jobs and access to essential services and support of many critical county programs stopped.

Yes. The Cooperative is moving forward with its plans to build a modern, independent community hospital in the Chippewa Valley to fill the critical need for hospital beds, surgical services, emergency department services, cancer care, labor and delivery, and other urgent healthcare gaps that exist in our communities. You can read more about the planned hospital here.

We have commissioned a detailed feasibility study to fully understand the unmet needs in our region to help plan for the hospital and services we need now and into the future.

Maintaining the physicians, medical staff, and services that Marshfield currently provides in the Chippewa Valley is important to the overall health of the region, and we welcome the news that Sanford intends to combine with Marshfield and hope that combination will stabilize the Marshfield Clinic system throughout Wisconsin.

This news does not change the fact that large gaps in access to healthcare services throughout Western Wisconsin exist and will grow unless we move to close them. The Chippewa Vallely Health Cooperative is dedicated to improving access to affordable, high-quality healthcare services that are governed locally and accountable to the people in our community. We are moving forward with our plan to build a modern, non-profit independent community hospital that accepts all payors, including Medicaid and Medicare, to provide the critical healthcare services our region needs to thrive.

The Board of Organizers chose the cooperative business structure and designated residents of the 18-county greater Chippewa Valley area 18 years or older, so that local community members own the cooperative and choose the board of directors. Becoming a member gives you a say in the direction of the Cooperative, its new independent community hospital, and the other healthcare services the organization will offer. Become a member today!

Any resident 18 years or older in the 18-county Chippewa Valley region can become members of the Cooperative for a $25 fee. You can sign up here.

1. The Chippewa Valley simply doesn’t have enough emergency room capacity or hospital beds to serve the region. While the other hospitals in our community have adjusted to handle more patients, they are at capacity and don’t have all of the local resources to serve the need.
   • Sacred Heart and St. Joseph’s had more than 22,000 Emergency Room Visits
   • Sacred Heart and St. Joseph’s averaged 125 hospitalized patients daily
   • Sacred Heart was planning for approximately 900 births in 2024

2. Many community patients throughout the greater Chippewa Valley region now have to travel great distances to get the healthcare services they need, as the other health care systems can’t accommodate the increase in patients closing HSHS hospitals and clinics created.

3. We think it’s very important that the great community gets an independent community hospital that is owned and governed by the people of the Chippewa Valley, so that decisions about services and capacity are made here, not by management teams headquartered in other parts of the state or country. The Cooperative’s membership will choose the the board of directors who must be from the 18-county membership region of the great Chippewa Valley.

 

4. The Cooperative is committed to making high-quality healthcare both accessible and affordable for the people of the Chippewa Valley region.

After significant research and evaluation, we determined that the cooperative structure provides the most flexibility and ensures that the community benefits from the organization and has governance of the organization, so that decisions for our community are made by people in our community, not by administrators outside of the region.

A formation board made of “Organizers” who develop corporate structure, member classes and the bylaws that will govern the Cooperative, while it also considers different operational plans. Once those are in place, the board of directors will be elected. This process generally takes up to eight-to-twelve months, although the formation board is already moving fast to put the required elements in place. Operational planning will be happening during this time.

We announced the formation board now because we felt it was important to let the community know that we’re doing this and moving quickly. We believe this is the right thing to do for the community.

The Organizers for the Chippewa Valley Health Cooperative are seven local business and community leaders with a deep and wide range of experience and expertise who have volunteered their time to form the Cooperative because they believe so strongly that the HSHS decision could have a devasting impact on our region, and they’re willing to move quickly now to start addressing access to affordable healthcare.

The Organizers are:

Patti Darley, Lori Geissler, Peter Hoeft, Mickey Judkins, Bob Krause, Thomas Larson, and Eric Rygg.

An independent physician is a doctor who owns their own medical practice and has key decision-making rights for the practice. Importantly, independent physicians have the freedom to meet their patients’ needs individually, and can work with multiple health systems and hospitals, offer all treatment choices, and refer patients anywhere necessary to receive the best care possible. Independent physicians are generally able to provide primary care services for up to 30% less than healthcare systems.

The Cooperative anticipates working with independent physicians throughout the region, including OakLeaf Medical Network, to ensure the Chippewa Valley community has community-governed services, programs, and facilities.

Yes. You can donate to the cause by mail or online here.

We are right now evaluating five (5) different locations in Chippewa and Eau Claire Counties for the new community hospital. We’ve commissioned a third-party expert feasibility study we expect to see the results of in the next month or so. That study will be one of the important inputs on what location we ultimately choose.

The physicians in the OakLeaf Medical Network have already pledged their support for the new hospital, and many have already joined the cooperative as physician members, showing their intention to seek admitting privileges at the new hospital when we’re open. One of the reasons we are so confident about building the new hospital is because of the excellent independent physicians throughout the OakLeaf Medical Network. Any medical professional licensed to practice in Wisconsin can apply to be a professional member of the Cooperative.

A hospital is not just a building, it’s also the physicians, providers, and of course the community. We are in an extraordinary position where we already have the potential medical staff here ready to practice in the new community hospital.