Five years as HSHS St. Clare Memorial Hospital

Oconto Falls facility has benefited from Health Sisters connection
By: 
Warren Bluhm
Oconto County Times Herald Editor

OCONTO FALLS — The life of St. Clare of Assisi mirrors that of her more well-known townsman, St. Francis, according to Chris Brabant, CEO of HSHS St. Clare Memorial Hospital in Oconto Falls.

“They grew up in a privileged family; they had their lives set for them,” Brabant said. “They came from noble families, wealthy families, and St. Clare like St. Francis felt she had more to give to the world. She gave up all of her wealth and the ‘good life’ to follow the teachings of St. Francis to serve people, especially the poor and underprivileged and the sick.”

The Oconto Falls hospital, formerly Community Memorial Hospital, recently celebrated the fifth anniversary of becoming fully integrated into the Hospital Sisters Health System — based in Springfield, Illinois — and taking the name St. Clare.

All of the HSHS hospitals are named after people who followed the teachings of Francis of Assisi, said David Lally, director of business development and advocacy for the system’s Eastern Wisconsin Division, which also includes St. Vincent and St. Mary’s in Green Bay, along with St. Nicholas in Sheboygan.

“The board members we had at the time who spent a lot of time down with the Sisters in Springfield, the story of St. Clare really resonated with them,” Lally said.

The connection with the larger organization has been a big plus for the community, said Brabant, who was appointed president and CEO in July 2018 to succeed Dan DeGroot, who was chief operating officer for the first four years as part of HSHS.

As part of the larger system, the hospital has had the resources to invest in physical improvements to the hospital campus and all of St. Clare’s rural health clinics.

“We’ve put in well over $8 million investment in the last five years in the infrastructure, in the form of technology, information systems, the hospital itself and the new hospital rooms, the rural health clinics and the technology at their fingertips,” Brabant said. “It’s that technology in conjunction with all of the specialists brought into the area, so instead of people from Oconto County having to travel to a larger city, they can get a lot of that care locally.”

A number of the doctors grew up in the area and came back to serve their communities, including Brabant.

“I grew up in Green Bay, but my father and his entire family grew up in Oconto County,” he said. “I spent a lot of time here as a kid, especially, so it’s wonderful to be back. When you walk through the doors of this hospital, you get the sense of how much people really care about caring for their own.”

The turnover rate is exceptionally low, he added.

“Once people start working here, they stay here, which is huge, because then that adds to the expertise,” Brabant said. “You’re not constantly churning people and continually having to retrain; instead, you could put those resources toward enhancing the knowledge that they have.”

Within months of the name change, the Medical Services Building opened on the HSHS St. Clare campus. It houses Prevea Health specialty care, the HSHS St. Vincent Hospital Cancer Center, the HSHS St. Vincent Dialysis Center and Advanced Pain Management.

The dialysis center is a new service that was added as a result of the HSHS affiliation and the Medical Services Building construction. Prior to this, many patients in the Oconto County region had to travel to Green Bay for dialysis care.

“It’s a way of bringing that high level of care to those patients who needed it the most right into the area,” Lally said.

Other advancements include telemedicine capabilities and Telestroke, which allows a specialist in Green Bay or other hospitals to fully monitor an emergency patient.

When a person having a stroke arrives at St. Clare’s emergency room, within moments they can have access to a neurologist who can examine and monitor the patient in partnership with the ER staff, receive immediate care and, if necessary, be transported to a more specialized facility in Green Bay.

Such technology is vital given a growing shortage of doctors, especially in the sub-specialty areas like neurosciences, Brabant said.

“If you have these highly specialized doctors who do these procedures in a place where they can immediately evaluate a patient, you essentially bring their service within range of the entire Oconto County area,” he said.

Lally noted that St. Clare was able to fund fully both of its high-tech monitoring units with grants, another example of the value of the HSHS partnership.

“As part of a system, we were able to tap into the grant writer who serves all the hospitals within our division,” Lally said. “Quite honestly, that would have been quite difficult to do without an actual grant writer, because that’s a unique set of skills.”

Other changes in the last five years include the additions of a Regional Wound Care and Hyperbaric Center and Regional Surgery Center. A new welcome center and chapel have also been built.

The anniversary is being marked with a variety of internal and external celebrations, including a picnic that featured Brabant in a dunk tank.

“Joy is one of our core values, and it’s something we don’t just talk about. We see it from the highest level of leadership,” Lally said. “We really like to celebrate internally with our colleagues and doing something fun — there’s always a meal, which I like, and putting our CEO in the dunk tank.”

“Yes, I was in a dunk tank — many, many times,” Brabant noted.

Coming up is the third annual Treat and Greet Oct. 29, an open house that gives the community a chance to tour the hospital and Medical Services Building by personnel, many of them in Halloween costumes.