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.

A Cooperative is a business that is owned and democratically governed by its members who also use its services that are designed to meet a common need. Members are instrumental to its existence and its ability to serve the community. Any resident of the 17-county Chippewa Valley region, 18 years or older, can become a member.

By the way, Wisconsin is a leading cooperative business state, with over 850 cooperative businesses across a wide variety of industries owned by over 2.9 million Wisconsin residents.

Any resident 18 years or older in the 17-county Chippewa Valley region can become members of the Cooperative for a $25 fee. You can sign up here.

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.