Chippewa Valley lawmakers and community leaders held a virtual roundtable last week to discuss the ongoing healthcare struggles in the area.

Nearly two years since the closure of HSHS Sacred Heart Hospital in Eau Claire and HSHS St. Joseph’s Hospital in Chippewa Falls, area residents are still struggling with inadequate access to healthcare. While other providers have increased their services in the region and plans for new hospital facilities develop, there are still some crucial services residents have not been able to access.

State Senator Jeff Smith participated in the healthcare roundtable, highlighting the loss of labor and delivery services following the HSHS closures as one of the biggest challenges still facing the Chippewa Valley.

“Both hospitals, and Sacred Heart especially in Eau Claire was the larger of the two, had been there for 125 years,” he said. “And so for many of my constituents, absolutely it made a big difference. We had 700, an average of over 700 births at Sacred Heart Hospital alone, and that meant that many people who were already planning to have their baby in Sacred Heart had to find some other place to do that.”

State Senator Jesse James also participated in the roundtable, highlighting the increased stress placed on the remaining emergency departments in the region as a result of the closure.

“The number one issue that we were being told by the professionals was the explosion that they were going to see when it came to emergency department visits, emergency room visits,” he said. “And that’s when the initial discussion started taking place where we needed to really educate our people back at home on the difference between urgent care and emergency room visits, trying to absorb some of that overflow that was going to take place.”

In addition to discussing the state of healthcare access in the Chippewa Valley, the roundtable also covered the economic impact of the hospital closures. Mike Sanders is the CEO of the Chippewa Valley Health Cooperative, and said the closures cost the region millions of dollars in tax revenue.

“We’ve worked with the West Central Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission and the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation, and the economic loss of these two hospital closures is 1,511 jobs per their analysis,” he said. “And the ripple effect of the wages beyond the hospital wages and into the community is purchasing power and lost wages of $98 million a year, which translates to about $28 million in tax revenue.”

The Chippewa Valley Health Cooperative partially reopened the St. Joseph’s Hospital site in Chippewa Falls recently, and plans to continue expanding the services offered there through 2026. The cooperative is also developing a new independent, community hospital in Lake Hallie. State Senator Smith also called on lawmakers to establish a hospital stabilization fund to address future rural hospital closures.

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