Governor Tony Evers visited Eau Claire this week where the community is still reeling
from late notice about closures of two hospitals and 19 clinics. The governor said he was
disappointed with the hospital sister's health systems. Lack of notification and how it was
handled was wrong. In an interview, local representative Karen Hurd shared her concerns.
As far as the impact, I consider this to be huge. Not as big as the Maui fires,
but certainly bigger than the East Palestine, Ohio, trained derailment where they had the big
chemical spill. It's bigger than that. I see it is bigger than that. This people are, I see that
people are going to die, but I want you to know that the state representatives for the Chippewa
Valley, we are living, breathing this every moment and trying to come up with something,
something to be able to to help. For more on the greater impact of these closures and the overall
trend of rural health access declining, we turn to John Ike, director of the Wisconsin office of
Rural Health at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health. And John Ike, thanks very much
for being here. My pleasure. So when hospital systems like this pull out of rural areas in
Wisconsin, how big of a shock is that to healthcare access? In a lot of ways, I think it's a shock.
It's a shock for patients who have to now drive further to get to appointments or to care for
loved ones. It's a shock to the EMS system in that they have to take patients longer and longer for
care. And I think it's also, it's jobs and it's also a hit to the local economy. A small community
is more attractive to all kinds of new businesses if they have robust healthcare and if that's missing,
that's challenging as well. Because where are people finding care in the state of Wisconsin?
We have a map to look at to show kind of the drive times that people experience getting to
an emergency room. Yeah, absolutely. So our office did an analysis of that drive time.
And you can see that. So the green is 10 minutes, the yellow 20 and the red 30-minute access.
So it's fairly obvious where the gaps are. The North Woods has sort of the biggest challenges
there. And you can see where in a sense the clusters are as well. And I think that cluster
is relevant to this situation where you have Eau Claire county so close to the twin cities.
And these are very large systems that are competing pretty fiercely with each other.
And so there's a lot of pressures on them. And so I think we see that in this situation
particularly. I think there's a reason that it happened here versus other parts of the state.
Representative Hurd said people will die. Is that what we're talking about?
Well, healthcare is always life and death. And so I do think that it's going to take longer
for people to get to care. It's going to take, it's going to be more challenging for them for
EMS in particular in rural areas. We're very concerned about drive times. And so that is
possible. But I think that we have a robust healthcare system in the state and people are
doing their best and are providing excellent care. So it is a challenge for sure.
Healthcare providers both urban and rural face worker shortages. Is it worse in rural areas?
I think, you know, the pandemic brought this sort of social challenge, sort of the divisions,
the partisan divisions where we take healthcare and politicize it. And so you have workers who
went from being heroes to suddenly being pariahs or political operatives or all of that. And I
think that really plays out in a smaller community. People know each other better. As someone walks
past me in a city street, I may not know they're a healthcare provider. But if it's a community
where everyone knows who works at the hospital or the clinic, you're more in a spotlight.
Those challenges that I think we all felt with family, extended family and neighbors
who disagree about topics. I think that's very compelling. It's very close to home in a smaller
community. And so I think those kind of social issues impacted the workforce. Not to mention the
fact that they were day after day of this work and seeing people very sick and dying. It takes
an emotional toll. And I don't think it's as easy as we don't have to wear masks anymore.
I think it's I still don't feel great at my job. Maybe I should consider an early retirement or
maybe I should consider a different line of work. And that persists? It does. I think in business,
they talk about how culture eats strategy for lunch. These are cultural issues. And that means
that we're going to see these are hard to change issues. And they're going to take a while. It's
going to take a lot of different solutions. And I don't think we'll see it go away quickly.
People are working very hard on it. But it will take time. Speaking of solutions,
what kind of measures are needed to expand access to quality rural healthcare?
I think in Wisconsin, we're very lucky. Up until recently, we haven't seen a lot of hospital closures.
And so I think we're doing well. We have to fill in these gaps that have been created. And I think
healthcare systems will do that. I think we have to look at building back the workforce. That's a
long process as well. And I think also broadband is very important. If we're providing care to
patients who have a drive to get into a follow-up appointment or a check-in, them being able to
communicate with their providers from their home or from a mobile situation is really important.
But there just isn't the broadband and cellular coverage in rural areas that we need.
John, thanks very much. Thanks for inviting me.
For more on this and other issues facing Wisconsin, visit our website at pbswisconsin.org
and then click on the news tab. That's our program for tonight on Frederica Fryberg. Have a good weekend.