Community Prepares Task Force to Address Shock of Medical Closings
locals leaders deal with fallout from closure of Sacred Heart, St. Joseph’s, Prevea
Chippewa Valley leaders have announced the creation of a broad task force that will address the massive medical, economic, and community fallout the impending closure of HSHS Sacred Heart and St. Joseph’s hospitals and Prevea Health will have on the region.
“This is impacting the Chippewa Valley area and not just one or two communities,” said David Minor, president and CEO of the Eau Claire Area Chamber of Commerce, said at a Friday, Jan. 26, press conference. The task force, modeled after one that helped coordinate local response to the COVID-19 pandemic, will include representatives of the region’s medical facilities, local governments, business organizations, as well as state and federal officials, Minor said. It will meet for the first time on Tuesday, Jan. 30, after which the task force’s members and co-chairs will be announced.
Just days earlier, the two hospitals had shocked the Chippewa Valley by disclosing their plans to close this spring, making a joint announcement with Prevea Health, which said it would be exiting the western Wisconsin region as well.
Altogether, an estimated 1,407 jobs will be lost, an even larger blow to the Chippewa Valley’s economy than the 1992 closure of the Uniroyal Goodrich Tire Co. (When the Uniroyal layoffs were announced in 1991, that company had a work force of 1,375 in Eau Claire.)
Minor emphasized that the task force will address more than the employment impact. “This is not just a business closing where we are losing employees,” he said. “We have patients, who are a very large piece of this. What’s going to happen to them? Where are they going to get care? How do they navigate all of those things?”
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This is not just a business closing where we are losing employees.
We have patients, who are a very large piece of this. What’s going to happen to them? Where are they going to get care? How do they navigate all of those things?
DAVID MINOR
PRESIDENT AND CEO, EAU CLAIRE AREA CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
Addressing and answering these questions will be one of the task force’s roles, Minor explained. He encouraged those in the community with questions about the closings to visit the chamber’s website and click on the green “HSHS/Prevea Recovery Task Force” button. There, people can submit questions and be placed on a mailing list for future communication. Similar contact forms will also be included on the websites of the Chippewa Falls and Menomonie chambers of commerce.
Community leaders from the city and county of Eau Claire as well as from Menomonie and Altoona spoke at the press conference. Representatives from Chippewa Falls – home to St. Joseph’s Hospital – will be also be part of the task force, although they were unable to attend the event.
Eau Claire City Council President Emily Berge emphasized the impact the closings will have on both the mental and physical health of residents. “People have lost their jobs, and people have lost their medical providers just seemingly in the blink of an eye,” she said. The closures include the behavioral health unit at Sacred Heart – the only one in the region to offer inpatient care for minors – as well as the L.E. Phillips Libertas Treatment Center for those dealing with drug and alcohol abuse.
Eau Claire County Administrator Kathryn Schauf added that loss of the HSHS hospitals and Prevea clinics will impact numerous services that regional counties rely on, including detox services (the closest detox units will be in Madison or Ashland), psychiatric and substance-abuse treatment beds, school-based mental health services, and providers for the county’s Birth to Three Program.
“I don’t think anyone yet understands the full impact the closures will have on the community,” added Altoona Mayor Brendan Pratt. “But I know that we will all work cooperatively to help wherever we can in the goal of implementing solutions to maintain the quality of health care our residents expect.”
Pratt added that the closures will hit Altoona hard because Prevea’s flagship local clinic is in River Prairie. However, he said he had met with leaders from nearby OakLeaf Surgical Hospital, who said they were committed to meeting the community’s needs, including by expanding their hours to Saturdays.
“The closure of these hospitals has prompted OakLeaf Surgical Hospital to evaluate opportunities to proactively expand its resources and services,” OakLeaf said in a Jan. 26 media release. “The leadership team is dedicated to collaborating with physicians, stakeholders, and community members to identify ways to enhance healthcare access and contribute positively to the community and employees affected by these closures.”
Minor said the region’s other hospitals and medical providers have reached out and promised to stay in communication with the new task force.
“None of us here today can tell you how long this is going to take and/or what we are going to look like on the other side,” he said. “But we have experienced this as a community with other issues. We know we will survive. We will prevail in this.”
SACRED HEART DEMONSTRATION
Just hours earlier, several dozen HSHS Sacred Heart employees and their supporters gathered along East Clairemont Avenue in front of the hospital in the early morning fog for an awareness-raising demonstration.
Organizers said they planned the event to show solidarity for the workers who will lose their jobs as well as to raise awareness of the negative impact the closures will have on existing patients, college students who obtain clinical experiences at the impacted facilities, and other local healthcare organizations who may now be overwhelmed.
Among the picketers was Denyse Schroeder, an obstetrics nurse who has worked at Sacred Heart for 40 years. Like many employees, she learned of the closure at a staff meeting on Monday, while others learned via social media or news reports.
Fellow OB nurse Shannon VanNess said she learned of the closure during her shift Monday. “I had to hold myself together and take care of patients,” she said, adding she hopes that after the hospital closes, the empty facility will be attractive to another healthcare provider.
“There’s so many things that Sacred Heart did that the other hospitals didn’t,” Schroeder said, among them juvenile psychiatric services and an infant loss support group that serves patients from all the area’s hospitals.
The hospital also delivered 823 babies last year, and VanNess and Schroeder said they’re worried about where expectant families will go now.
And yet, amid the uncertainty, they felt community support, whether it came in the form of kind words or appreciative honks from early-morning commuters on Clairemont Avenue.
“I feel love,” Schroeder said as she stood with others along the busy road. “There’s been so much outpouring of support.”
