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insight on By Connie Fellman health care Medical outreach Rural Health Initiative earns state and national recognition w w w. i n s i g h t o n b u s i n e s s . c o m COURTESY THEDACARE W hen a trip to the doctor can cost you a half day's labor, it's easy to see how blood pressure checks and cholesterol screenings can take a back seat to the more pressing matter of making a living on a farm. That is, until living itself becomes jeopardized. "If people in farming communities, for example, forgo preventative health care because of their busy lifestyles or because of the cost, then by the time they make it into our emergency room, their health is often in crisis," says Brian Burmeister, senior vice president of Primary Care/Rural Campuses/ Behavior Health at ThedaCare. It's a familiar scenario for people living in rural communities around Northeast Wisconsin, where access to health care was once limited primarily to urban areas. "Farmers are self-employed, working long hours, often far away from the nearest hospital or clinic," explains Rhonda Strebel, executive director of the Rural Health Initiative, a non-profit program focused on improving the health of Wisconsin's rural residents. "The reason that this group is often missed is they're just out there doing their work and there's a lot of isolation. It's a cultural thing." Recognizing the need to bring health care out to the rural population, rather than making patients travel to the city, ThedaCare and other Northeast Wisconsin medical groups have been expanding their facilities and services into a Shawano Medical Center became part of ThedaCare last year, and the Rural Health Initiative was launched by both in partnership with the county extension service, public health department and local schools. The Initiative helps reach rural residents and helps prevent expensive health care costs. growing network of remote locations. "We know we have to invest in having clinics and facilities, programs and services in the region where our customers are and that we are very much accessible to them," says Chris Woleske, executive vice president of Bellin Health and CEO of Oconto Hospital. Home-grown healing The Rural Health Initiative was launched in Shawano County in 2003 by ThedaCare and Shawano Medical Center (now part of ThedaCare) in partnership with the county extension service, public health department and local schools. As part of the program, a nurse makes free house calls to all interested farm families to provide health information, education, referrals to area services and listen to the families' health concerns. The program is privately funded primarily by ThedaCare along with other local businesses, foundations and community members. Now expanded into Outagamie and Waupaca counties, the Rural Health Initiative has received both state and national recognition within the past year, but the real winner, according to program leaders, is the Northeast Wisconsin community as a whole. "We're all part of the same community," Strebel says. "If part of us is not healthy, all of us are not healthy." Bellin's Oconto Hospital and Medical Center provides another example of partnering with local agencies to stretch health care dollars further into remote locations. When the local hospital closed about eight years ago, Bellin joined the Oconto Hospital Citizens foundation to bring a hospital back into their community. The critical access hospital [continued] » J u l y 2 013 • Insight | 29