Saint Joseph's Hospital Offers Quality Care Far From the Big Cities
Founded in 1890 by the Sisters of the Sorrowful Mother, Saint Joseph’s Hospital has grown to a massive, state-of-the art facility that serves the emergency, surgical and medical specialty needs of a large swath of rural Wisconsin.
“People are just amazed when they get here and there is this large medical complex in a small town,” says Carla David, public and community relations manager for the 500-plus bed hospital.
The hospital is part of Ministry Health Care, a values ministry-driven health-care delivery network of aligned hospitals, clinics and other providers based in Wisconsin and Minnesota, according to David.
Saint Joseph’s is physically linked to Marshfield Clinic. That latter facility’s more than 400 physician specialists and subspecialists are on staff at the hospital.
The hospital’s cutting-edge technologies include gamma knife radiosurgery, intraoperative MRI, the latest in nuclear medicine imaging and the da Vinci robotic surgery system.
Short of performing organ transplants – patients have to go to Madison or perhaps Milwaukee for those – the hospital offers a full range of services.
Saint Joseph’s is one of the largest rural referral medical centers in Wisconsin and the only verified trauma center in the north-central part of the state, according to David.
She adds that it is one of three designated Children’s Hospitals in Wisconsin.
“We’re located right in the middle of the state,” says David. “The alternative for patients would be driving all the way to Madison or Milwaukee or the Twin Cities (Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minn.), and for those in north-central Wisconsin, Marshfield is closer to home.”
Patients not only come from throughout the state, they also come from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
“Other key services include cancer, heart, neurosciences, neonatology and pediatrics, orthopedics, behavioral health and palliative care,” says David, citing specialties.
“We offer so much. To narrow it down is a little difficult,” she says.
Of course, to find such a large facility planted in a city of 20,000 people in the state best known for cheese, beer and Green Bay Packers may surprise some.
But it is just that location that draws some of the finest medical practitioners.
“It is a big medical facility, so it attracts a lot of professionals here,” David says. “They like being able to practice their specialties in a big medical facility located in a small-town atmosphere.”
