Wealthy Health Chain Closing 2 Hospitals; St. Joes in Chippewa Falls WI and Sacred Heart Hospital in Eau Claire, WI

My large family-and extended family has used St Joe's for eons. It was a shock to see this.



Wealthy Health Chain Closing 2 Hospitals

Executives seek to maximize revenue? GOP rejection of expanded Medicaid also at fault?
By Bruce Murphy - Feb 14th, 2024 10:36 am


Another health care chain is closing hospitals in Wisconsin and Republican legislators are considering using taxpayer dollars to help assure emergency care continues. But their opposition to accepting federal dollars to expand Medicaid helped cause the problem, Democrats charge.

At stake are two hospitals that have been key providers of health care in western Wisconsin for 135 years. The Illinois-based Hospital Sisters Health System (HSHS) has announced it will close the HSHS Sacred Heart Hospital in Eau Claire, founded in 1889, and HSHS St. Joseph’s Hospital in Chippewa Falls, founded in 1885, by April or sooner. The closures could have a devastating impact on health care in western Wisconsin, state officials fear..............................................




..............As for Medicaid payments, if those are a problem for the two hospitals, the solution would be to accept federal expansion of Medicaid, as 40 states (including many heavily Republican states) have done, Democrats have argued. “Not having it helped cause what happened, Gov. Tony Evers has said. “If we had Medicaid expansion, they would be able to pay more to the hospitals for services to people that are part of that program.”

But Republican legislators continue to resist this, which has also cost taxpayers billions: Wisconsin would have seen an additional $2.8 billion in savings between 2013 and 2019 had it accepted full Medicaid expansion, according to the Legislative Fiscal Bureau, and continued savings in the years since then.

Instead GOP legislators are pushing a plan that offers a tiny bandaid: $15 million for grants to fund health systems that commit to providing hospital emergency department services in the Eau Claire and Chippewa Falls areas, as WPR reported.

The plan suggests Republicans have no conception of the massive scale of health care organizations in Wisconsin, which generated $74.3 billion in revenue in 2021. That $15 million amounts to one-fifth of 1% of what’s spent for health care at Wisconsin’s hospitals.

Wisconsin’s Democratic U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin had a more sensible idea, releasing a statement calling on HSHS to delay closures to the two hospitals until it has time to “consider, in good faith, offers to purchase your facilities and equipment to support the continuation of health care services in the region for the patient populations served by Sacred Heart and St. Joseph’s Hospitals.”

That would seem to be the least the well-paid executives of HSHS could do.