Rural hospital CEO: ‘Women’s health has to be made a priority’

Expectant mothers are facing an OB-GYN desert in western Wisconsin, with several hospitals closing their birthing centers over the last few years. The gap in care has forced pregnant women to travel long distances for prenatal care, emergencies, and when they go into labor. One rural hospital is taking a different approach—they’re expanding.

When Eilidh Pederson goes to work each day, she feels a responsibility to her friends and neighbors in her small community in St. Croix County.

“Rural health is a calling,” Pederson said. “I think it’s the best way to practice medicine and the best way to deliver care.”

“The reason for that is because you know your patients—you see them at the hockey rink, you see them at the football game.”

Pederson is the CEO of Western Wisconsin Health (WWH), which has its main campus in Baldwin—a community of about 5,000 people. It’s where her three kids go to school.

“There’s deep accountability,” Pederson said. “You can’t go to the grocery store and say to someone, ‘I’m sorry, we closed your labor and delivery department.’”

“They’re not going to stand for that.”

Reaching a crisis

Pederson said rural obstetrical care has reached a crisis. Six hospitals within a 60-mile radius of Baldwin have shuttered their labor and delivery departments in the last few years.

Nationally, over half of the country’s rural hospitals aren’t offering labor and delivery services, and many that still do could be forced to end maternity care due to financial losses, according to the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform. Long-established pressures include low reimbursement, staffing shortages, and higher expenses.

“We have to do something about this—this is not acceptable—to have more than half our rural hospitals no longer delivering babies,” Pederson said. “We already have a real challenge in our country of high maternal mortality rates. Lack of access to quality obstetrical care is a driver of that.”

She wants WWH, which currently provides care to 13,000 patients, to be part of the solution in women’s health.

“For our hospital, it was critical for us, as a safety net provider, to put a flag in the ground and say, ‘We will continue to deliver babies,’” said Pederson. “Despite all odds, we will do whatever we can to be here for our families—for our laboring patients who need a safe and healthy place to deliver.”

Western Wisconsin Health just opened up an expanded labor and delivery department. Photo by Salina Heller/UNN

Redefining rural maternal health

In what seemed like a potentially bad financial decision, last fall WWH’s board of directors decided to expand its labor and delivery department, along with the surgical unit. Keeping labor and delivery units going is expensive—and it’s compounded by a nationwide shortage of OB-GYN physicians.
Even as they were two months into construction, with the sounds of circular saws and drills ringing across what would become the new, much-larger obstetrics department, a chilling announcement was happening 45 minutes down I-94.

Leadership from Hospital Sisters Health System had arrived from Illinois to abruptly announce that Sacred Heart and St. Joseph’s Hospitals, along with 19 Prevea clinics throughout the Eau Claire and Chippewa Falls region, would permanently close.

Shock and grief hit the 1,400 employees who lost their jobs in the blink of an eye.

Later, staff in Baldwin learned that more than 820 women gave birth at Sacred Heart in 2023. “When that number was shared, there was an audible gasp—that’s such a staggering number,” Pederson shared. “How are our hospitals going to meet that need?”

But they’d try. The grand opening of the new labor and delivery unit in June, with its water-birth and state-of-the-art suites, couldn’t have come at a better time.

“We’ve seen an increase of about 10% of our patient population coming from those areas,” Pederson said. “It’s easier to define in our obstetrical services for example, where we’ve seen a pretty dramatic increase.”

“Last year we delivered 280 babies. This year, we’re projecting 400 deliveries.”

In 2016 Baldwin Area Medical Center rebranded to Western Wisconsin Health and opened a new facility. Photo by Salina Heller/UNN

Ensuring people “don’t slip through the cracks”

Wisconsin’s US Senator Tammy Baldwin, a Democrat, has been looking for ways to address hospital closure problems like the one in western Wisconsin before they start. Recently, she drafted legislation designed to protect communities facing a closure.

A nod to Sacred Heart and St. Joe’s, the Hospital Stability and Health Services Act would require closing hospitals to notify the Department of Health and Human Services and provide a mitigation plan.

“For too many Wisconsin families, especially in our rural communities, health care is already a struggle to get,” Baldwin said. “If a big hospital is going to shut down, they should help ensure patients don’t slip through the cracks when they are gone.”

Democratic Gov. Tony Evers appreciates that Baldwin is working on the issue at the federal level, but is frustrated at the state level.

It’s been half a year since Evers approved a crisis response bill that would help people get health care to patients in the wake of the Eau Claire and Chippewa Falls closings.

But Republican lawmakers on the Wisconsin State Legislature’s Joint Committee on Finance have refused to release the funds, after Evers made line-item vetoes to the bill that would give local officials more flexibility in deciding how to use the funds. Evers said it isn’t a real justification for the ongoing refusal—rather that “it’s a troubling pattern of behavior.”

“While it’s unfortunate Republican lawmakers are continuing to hold up the $15 million for the Chippewa Valley that I approved in February, I’m grateful Sen. Baldwin is working to make sure Wisconsin patients aren’t left in the lurch,” said Evers. “The ‘HSHS Act’ will go a long way in making sure there is transparency and that folks can find and have access to the care they need.”

Reforming the future

WWH’s CEO said the Hospital Stability and Health Services Act is a great starting point towards reform. “The time is now—we must have this be a wake-up call to all of us,” Pederson said. “Rural obstetrical care—women’s health—has to be made a priority.”

Pederson said she will continue to advocate for change, as WWH gets ready to open up a new facility in Spring Valley in October. She said it’s meant to serve residents there, plus others who have lost their medical home.

“Know that we are not going anywhere,” Pederson said. “It’s important for us to continue to deliver services in a way our community deserves and needs for generations to come.”

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