Much of the current misperception about hospital profits is driven by the fact that the only publicly available data on hospital and health system finances comes from the state-mandated Hospital Fiscal Survey, which includes hospital data only. That is why WHA decided to survey its largest integrated health system members, requesting information on their overall finances. Those systems included Aurora Healthcare, Ministry Health Care, Wheaton Franciscan Healthcare, Affinity Health System, Gundersen Lutheran, Columbia-St. Mary’s, ProHealth Care, ThedaCare, and Luther Midelfort. Surveyed systems include 45 acute care hospitals with half of the total Wisconsin hospital revenues. This week, WHA issued a news release to targeted media outlets and state legislators with the results of the survey.

What the survey found was the total operating margin for nine of Wisconsin’s largest integrated health systems is TWO PERCENT. It’s an important number because it shows how focusing solely on the hospital component of health systems paints an incomplete and misleading picture of hospital finances.

Hospitals and health systems provide a broad range of health services to their communities, including: physician practices, nursing homes, home health agencies, behavioral health care and other local health services, that typically operate at a low margin – if not a loss. Nevertheless, these vital services are maintained in the community if the hospital can maintain a sufficient profit margin to continue to subsidize them.

Of the nine systems surveyed by the Wisconsin Hospital Association (WHA), all had physician clinics, eight had pharmacies, eight provided home health care, seven provided hospice care, five had nursing homes, and three had assisted living facilities.

"The analysis clearly demonstrates that health system margins are significantly lower than hospital-only margins because the costs of maintaining vitally needed community health services tend to be cross-subsidized by hospitals," said WHA President Steve Brenton. "If not for hospital support, many of these services would have never been started or closed long ago. Wisconsin’s not-for-profit hospitals are fulfilling a mission that guarantees community-based continuity of care," Brenton added.

The survey results are displayed in the table below:

                                                        System Hospitals                     Health Systems Data
                                                        Fiscal Survey Data*                  in WHA Survey*

        Operating Revenue                                 $5,564                                     $8,387

        Operating Expenses                               $5,143                                     $8,217

        Operating Margin                                     $421                                        $170

        Percent Margin                                         7.6%                                       2.0%

"Although this analysis was based on health system data, it’s important to note that free standing community hospitals all across the state also subsidize unprofitable local services," said WHA Vice President of Finance Brian Potter. "Hospitals regardless of size and organizational structure are investing resources into fragile local health care infrastructure," according to Potter.

In its most recent newsletter, the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance (WTA), a respected non-partisan fiscal think tank, reports that the new hospital tax and proposed $1.25 increase in the tobacco tax included in Governor Doyle’s budget will be used for increased spending in other areas unrelated to health care.

A previous analysis released by the non-partisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau reported that $873 million in existing funding for Medicaid is being taken out of the program and used to support spending in other parts of the state budget. To fill the Medicaid hole, the budget uses all of the proposed increase in the tobacco tax, roughly one-third of the hospital tax (the total amount not being returned to hospitals through a projected rate increase) and one-time money taken from the Injured Patients and Families Compensation Fund (IPFCF).

The WTA report takes it a step further, stating: "… switching (Medicaid) from general fund support makes available dollars to cover expenditures in other GPR programs. With the largest share of GPR spending going to education, it could be argued that additional tobacco and new hospital taxes indirectly pay for education from preschool through Ph.D."

The proposed budget contains several examples of "new state revenues earmarked for one purpose and used for another," the WTA reports.

"The WTA analysis cuts through the extremely complicated, and almost impossible to convey, budget shell games to illustrate how $873 million in existing funding is being taken out of Medicaid to pay for other state spending," said WHA’s Eric Borgerding. "While WHA has been raising this issue for weeks in the context of the hospital tax, we are happy to see the WTA weighing-in. Anyone grappling with the 2007-08 budget should take a few minutes to read the report." (For a copy of the March 26 report "Follow the money: State Budget Part III" call the WTA at 608-241-9789 or go online at www.wistax.org.)

According to WHA, if the $873 million were simply left in the Medicaid program, and the proposed tobacco tax increase was used to make progress in health care rather than fill budget holes, there would be more than enough money available to fund expanded health care coverage and improve reimbursements.

"The WTA’s independent analysis absolutely confirms WHA’s own…there is absolutely no need for a massive hospital tax. The money is already there, we just need stop raiding Medicaid," Borgerding said.

WHA met with Administration officials this week to discuss a number of technical issues and other serious concerns the Association has raised in its opposition to the proposed hospital tax. Another meeting may occur later this month.

Wisconsin’s Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen is confirmed to speak at 2007 Advocacy Day on May 1 in Madison.

"We are pleased that Attorney General Van Hollen will be with us," said WHA President Steve Brenton. "It will be an excellent opportunity for our members to learn of his priorities for the Department of Justice and ways that we can partner on issues of common concern."

In addition to the Attorney General, Advocacy Day’s great line up of speakers continues with Kellyanne Conway, a nationally-regarded and highly-quoted pollster, who will provide the morning keynote address, and nationally known grassroots guru Amy Showalter, who will provide grassroots training on how to effectively meet with legislators.

As with each Advocacy Day, the highlight of the day is always the hundreds of attendees who take what they’ve learned and put that into action by meeting with their legislators in the afternoon. With a proposed hospital tax, raid on Medicaid and the Injured Patients & Families Compensation Fund, and a cigarette tax increase all pending before the Legislature, there is no better time to let your legislators know how you feel about these important issues. The State Capitol is only a scant two blocks away (transportation is available), so make sure to schedule your travel plans accordingly so you can visit with your legislators in the afternoon.

A complete program and registration form are available online at www.wha.org. For questions on Advocacy Day, contact Jenny Boese at 608-268-1816 or jboese@wha.org. For questions specific to registration, contact Sherry Rabuck at srabuck@wha.org or 608-274-1820.

Dave Breitbach, CFO of Prairie du Chien Memorial Hospital, testified against the hospital tax, and Emily Hiatt of Gundersen Lutheran focused her testimony on the raid of the Injured Patients & Families Compensation Fund (IPFCF) at this week’s Joint Finance Committee hearing in Prairie du Chien. This was the fourth of six scheduled public hearings on the state budget, and hospitals again, as they have in every corner of the state, turned out to voice their concerns about the state budget and its impact on the health care delivery system.

Combined, Prairie du Chien Memorial and Gundersen Lutheran would lose up to $2.1 million dollars biennially under the hospital tax. Like so many others have testified, Prairie du Chien’s Breitbach has already experienced a failed provider tax – the nursing home bed tax.

"Crawford County currently has two nursing homes. Over a decade ago a bed tax was imposed on nursing homes in order to increase their dismal Medicaid reimbursements. Sound familiar?" asked Breitbach. "Are the nursing homes in any better shape after ten plus years of this tax? Crawford County’s nursing homes certainly aren’t."

To explain how Prairie du Chien Memorial Hospital and the people of Crawford County could be impacted, Breitbach added:

"The hospital helps subsidize numerous programs, including the Family Resource Center, Crawford Abuse Resistance Effort and various other related services…A tax on our hospital could have a detrimental effect on these and other hospital subsidized services."

Gundersen’s Emily Hiatt testified against the raid of the IPFCF. Recently, the Legislature’s own nonpartisan Legislative Audit Bureau found that the proposal raid "would place the Fund in a deficit accounting position and may result in future increases in provider assessment rates."

"This deficit will increase rates, on top of the 30 percent rate increase since 2005," said Hiatt. "This year Gundersen will pay the Fund nearly one million dollars. That’s more than a quarter of a million dollars more than two years ago," Hiatt said.

To put this into perspective, Hiatt provided examples of two initiatives Gundersen could have done for its patients with the $230,000 it paid instead to the IPFCF in rate increases:

• Equip a Pediatric Trauma Simulation Lab to train nurses in caring for infants and children who present with life-threatening injuries; or,
• Equip every ambulance in western Wisconsin with an EKG machine that transmits a heart attack patient’s vital signs to the nearest hospital.

"All of us here today are trying to solve this growing health care crisis, to prevent another Wisconsin hospital from closing due to unsustainable costs, and to prevent even one more person from being priced out of health care coverage," according to Hiatt. "So, at a time when Gundersen is focused on lowering the cost of health care, we are unwilling to support an IPFCF raid or a hospital tax that will drive up the cost of care for our patients."

The last two JFC budget hearings are scheduled April 11 in Rhinelander and April 12 in Green Bay. Hospitals again plan to be represented.

Wisconsin hospital systems representing about one half of the state’s total hospital expenses voluntarily participated in an information-gathering exercise that proves a prediction made in this column just three weeks ago....hospital "profitability" is a poor proxy for measuring aggregate financial performance of system-wide activities of hospital systems.

In today’s delivery environment, hospital-based inpatient and outpatient care are just two lines of service provided by increasingly integrated delivery organizations whose communities require "unprofitable" but essential services like long term care, home health care, community dental clinics, behavioral health care, physician clinics and urgent care centers. Much like the hospital emergency department (a hugely unprofitable but essential service), many of the much needed community programs are only sustainable because of cross-subsidies from hospital "profits." That’s the reality of today’s health delivery environment and a proven fact as confirmed in this study.

It’s also noteworthy that the patient populations served by these unprofitable community services are heavily skewed to public program coverage (or in some cases…no coverage). Senator Russ Decker (D-Weston) recently suggested a "corporate income tax on hospital profits." But one could make the case that we already have a defacto tax right now. Hospital "profits" are being heavily "taxed" to underwrite the government’s failure to pay for its own programs—including services provided to the medically indigent and frail elderly outside the physical walls of the hospital.

As mentioned in a previous column, for-profit organizations are not tripping over themselves to offer up these community health services. Hospitals, on the other hand, are filling a void that guarantees community-based continuity of care. This study shows exactly how Wisconsin hospitals are deploying their "profits" in a manner consistent with their missions.

Steve Brenton,
President

Every year, close to 1,000 individuals from businesses across the state converge on Madison for Business Day. As WHA is a co-sponsor of Business Day, numerous hospital representatives attend this event.

During the morning’s legislative leadership panel discussion, audience questions focused heavily on health care and related issues, including the proposed hospital tax. In response to one of those questions, Speaker Mike Huebsch (R-La Crosse) drew a loud round of applause when he stated, "The Assembly will not pass a budget that includes a hospital tax."

Assembly Minority Leader Jim Kreuser (D-Kenosha) told attendees that in the coming months the Legislature would have to work cooperatively on many issues, such as health care reform. While the two sides may have different perspectives on how to get there, both sides know something must be done.

Earlier in the day, WHA Senior Vice President Eric Borgerding provided hospital attendees a members-only briefing on key budget issues in preparation for their legislative visits in the afternoon. Borgerding detailed WHA’s opposition to the proposed hospital tax and the $175 million raid of the Injured Patients & Families Compensation Fund (IPFCF), as well as WHA’s continued support for a proposed cigarette tax increase.

Underlying each of these issues, Borgerding stressed, is the fact that the Governor’s budget proposal raids the Medicaid budget to the tune of at least $873 million dollars, leaving a hole that is filled with hospital tax, tobacco tax and IPFCF revenue (see related article). Instead of raiding Medicaid, WHA supports the unanimous recommendations of Governor Doyle’s Healthy Wisconsin Council to increase the tobacco tax and use those revenues to expand health care coverage and provide improvements in provider payments.

Keynote speaker Newt Gingrich provided attendees with his perspectives on transforming health care in the future. He believes Americans currently have an "entitlement mentality" on health care, likening it to how one views a rental car as opposed to one they own.

To begin addressing this he indicated the need to fundamentally change the incentives in health care to reward health, wellness and quality. Gingrich praised Wisconsin as "probably the leading state in the nation on transparency and quality initiatives." This was demonstrated in one of Gingrich’s handouts that showed the relationship between quality and Medicare spending in Wisconsin as one of the best in the nation. The chart showed Wisconsin having one of the highest levels of quality for the least amount of cost per Medicare beneficiary.

Representatives from the following hospitals/systems attended Business Day: Affinity, Agnesian, Aspirus, Aurora Health Care, Children’s Hospital, Columbia St. Mary’s, Franciscan Skemp, Gundersen Lutheran, Holy Family Memorial, Ministry Healthcare, St. Joseph’s Hospital-Marshfield, St. Nicholas Hospital, Southwest Health Center and SSM Healthcare.

Employees and board members from Boscobel Area Health Care met recently with freshman legislator Rep. Phil Garthwaite (D-Fennimore) to discuss the proposed hospital tax.

"Our calculations show a loss of $186,000 per year if this tax is enacted. That’s a little more than half of our operating budget. We can ill afford that," said Boscobel Area Health Care Administrator Gary Bezucha.

While Bezucha indicated that drawing down federal dollars to help fund Medicaid is a good idea, he told Garthwaite that the hospital tax was not needed to do so. Instead he said the proposed cigarette tax increase would leverage federal dollars in the same manner and cover the proposed health care expansions in the Governor’s budget.

During the meeting, Rep. Garthwaite expressed his concerns about whether this tax would actually end up going where it was supposed to go.

That is a concern held by many individuals, as Wisconsin has a dismal track record in this regard. Examples of raids on so-called "segregated" dollars include Wisconsin’s nursing home bed tax, the Injured Patients & Families Compensation Fund (IPFCF) and the transportation fund. Each of these segregated funds has experienced raids where a portion of the dollars has been diverted to non-related state programs. The IPFCF has so far been successful at staving off a raid, although the current budget, for the third time, proposes to do just that.

In covering this meeting, the local Boscobel Dial newspaper quoted Rep. Garthwaite as saying, "right now I’d tend to vote against (the hospital tax) just from what I’ve heard today."

Washington County Circuit Judge Annette Ziegler beat Madison attorney Linda Clifford in Tuesday’s Supreme Court election. Ziegler will replace retiring Justice Jon Wilcox and begin serving her 10-year term on the Supreme Court beginning August 1.

Many expect Ziegler to replace Justice Wilcox as one of the Court’s three (out of seven) strict constructionist leaning justices, along with Justices David Prosser and Pat Roggensack.

The next election for Supreme Court will occur in April 2008 when Justice Butler’s term on the Court expires. That race is expected to be equally, if not even more, competitive as it will likely determine the philosophical balance of the court.

"Health care providers have traditionally taken an almost indifferent approach to Supreme Court elections," said WHA’s Eric Borgerding. "The Ferdon decision permanently changed that, as evidenced by this last election, and will almost certainly be the case in the next election. ’Health care’ cares about the Court more than ever before."

"Several recent Supreme Court decisions have had significant implications for Wisconsin hospitals, most notably, the 2005 decision in Ferdon v. Wisconsin Patients Compensation Fund that declared Wisconsin’s previous medical malpractice cap unconstitutional," said WHA Associate Counsel Matthew Stanford. "Ferdon and other cases illustrate the importance of Wisconsin’s ‘Third Branch’ in health care."

Wisconsin passed a new medical malpractice cap in 2006.

The Workers Compensation Advisory Council, which includes representatives of labor and management, met April 5 to begin negotiations on the "agreed-to" legislation that the Council is scheduled to complete by June. The biennial bill proposed by the Council is traditionally approved by the Legislature without amendment and signed by the Governor. See the March 2 edition of The Valued Voice for further discussion of the process.

At the Council’s meeting on February 28, the Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce and other representatives of management on the Council announced that they plan to propose a fee schedule for health care services paid through the workers compensation system. The Council was scheduled to learn the details of the proposed fee schedule at the meeting April 5, but the Council was told the proposal had not been completed. Representatives from both labor and management underscored that any changes to the system must be carefully considered and evaluated by the Council. The Council will meet only one more time before the planned completion date in June.

WHA, the Wisconsin Medical Society, and the Wisconsin Chiropractic Association remain concerned that a proposed fee schedule could jeopardize the excellent health outcomes and patient/worker satisfaction currently experienced in the program. A Workers Compensation Research Institute (WCRI) study suggests "that the Wisconsin system delivers an excellent value proposition for employers and workers—good worker outcomes at lower than typical costs to employers." The WCRI report prepared for the Department of Workforce Development continues, "Given these findings, some argue that there is little reason (or little benefit and some risk) to introduce a fee schedule since it might lead providers to reduce access to care for injured workers, or lead them to increase hard-to-manage revenue maximizing behavior in billing or treatment decisions."

WHA, the Medical Society, and the Chiropractic Association are working together to ensure that any proposed legislation serves only to improve and in no way jeopardize what is a model workers compensation system. Watch The Valued Voice for more information as the proposed legislation develops.

The WHA Employee Pride Program will recognize 66 health care employees at a special reception, dinner and ceremony on April 26 at the Kalahari Resort in Wisconsin Dells. Below is the list of hospitals that have sent WHA the name of the employee who will be honored that evening. If your hospital is NOT listed and your information was submitted to WHA, or if your hospital has not submitted this information but plans to participate, contact Mary Kay Grasmick at 608-274-1820 or mgrasmick@wha.org immediately. The deadline to submit the employee’s name to WHA was March 30, so ACT NOW if you plan to participate in this very special event.

Aspirus Wausau Hospital, Wausau

Aurora Health Center Jackson, Jackson

Aurora Medical Center of Manitowoc County, Two Rivers

Aurora Medical Center of Washington County, Hartford

Aurora Sinai Medical Center, Milwaukee

Aurora St. Luke’s Medical Center, Milwaukee

Beaver Dam Community Hospital, Beaver Dam

Bellin Hospital, Green Bay

Berlin Memorial Hospital, Berlin

Black River Memorial Hospital, Black River Falls

Bloomer Medical Center-Luther Midelfort, Bloomer

Boscobel Area Health Care, Boscobel

Burnett Medical Center, Grantsburg

Columbia St. Mary’s, Milwaukee

Community Memorial Hospital, Oconto Falls

Divine Savior Healthcare, Portage

Fort Healthcare, Fort Atkinson

Froedtert Hospital, Milwaukee

Grant Regional Health Center, Lancaster

Gundersen Lutheran, La Crosse

Hayward Area Memorial Hospital, Hayward

Howard Young Health Care, Inc., Woodruff

Hudson Hospital, Hudson

Lakeview Medical Center, Rice Lake

Langlade Memorial Hospital, Antigo

Memorial Health Center, Medford

Memorial Hospital of Lafayette Co., Darlington

Memorial Medical Center, Neillsville

Mercy Health System, Janesville

Monroe Clinic, Monroe

Oconomowoc Memorial Hospital, Oconomowoc

Our Lady of Victory Hospital, Stanley

Red Cedar Medical Center, Menomonie

Reedsburg Area Medical Center, Reedsburg

Ripon Medical Center, Ripon

Sacred Heart Hospital, Eau Claire

Sacred Heart-St. Mary’s Hospitals, Inc., Rhinelander

Saint Clare’s Hospital, Weston

Saint Joseph’s Hospital, Marshfield

Saint Michael’s Hospital, Stevens Point

Sauk Prairie Memorial Hospital, Prairie du Sac

Spooner Health System, Spooner

St. Clare Hospital & Health Services, Baraboo

St. Joseph’s Community Health Services, Hillsboro

St. Joseph’s Hospital, Chippewa Falls

St. Luke’s South Shore, Cudahy

St. Mary’s Care Center, Madison

St. Mary’s Hospital, Madison

St. Mary’s Hospital Medical Center, Green Bay

St. Nicholas Hospital, Sheboygan

St. Vincent Hospital, Green Bay

The Orthopaedic Hospital of Wisconsin, Glendale

The Richland Hospital, Richland Center

The Wisconsin Heart Hospital, Wauwatosa

Tri-County Memorial Hospital, Whitehall

UW Hospital and Clinics, Madison

VA Medical Center, Dept. Veterans Affairs, Tomah

Vernon Memorial Healthcare, Viroqua

Watertown Memorial Hospital, Watertown

Waukesha Memorial Hospital, Waukesha

Waupun Memorial Hospital, Waupun

West Allis Memorial Hospital, West Allis

Wheaton Franciscan Healthcare-All Saints, Racine

Wheaton Franciscan Healthcare-Elmbrook, Brookfield

Wheaton Franciscan Healthcare-St. Francis, Milwaukee

Wheaton Franciscan Healthcare-St. Joseph, Milwaukee

A daylong seminar, "Cutting Your Health Care Costs," is being offered through the Center for Community Partnerships at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh and co-sponsored by Ingenuity First, a division of ThedaCare. The seminar is designed to help employers implement practical solutions that can reduce health care costs and improve employee health. The seminar is being held in two locations: Liberty Hall Conference Center in Kimberly on April 20, and River Center on the UW-Oshkosh Campus on April 27.

Presenters will describe the health care provider’s role in delivering the quality, cost-effective care that offers a better value to employers.

Wisconsin’s transparency initiatives in quality, pricing, and community benefit will be the topic of WHA President Steve Brenton’s presentation. The seminar features Serigraph CEO John Torinus as the keynote speaker. Torinus is well known for his innovative approaches to employer-provided health care. Other business presenters and speakers include human resource leaders from Miles Kimball, Webcrafters, Manitowoc County and the Alliance.

Other presenters include Dr. Philbert Chen, medical director of Community Partners Health Plan; Christopher Queram, president and CEO of the Wisconsin Collaborative for Healthcare Quality; and Julie Bartels, executive director of the Wisconsin Health Information Organization.

The seminar is offered for continuing education credit to human resources managers and other business leaders. Attendance is limited to 75 at each session. Participants will receive a tool kit of resources and tips that empowers them to take action in their own organizations.

Community Memorial Hospital, Menomonee Falls has felt a deep commitment to the community it serves since opening in 1964. That’s why the Board of Directors formed a committee 12 years ago to identify unmet health needs in the community and offer grants to address those needs. That committee, the Community Outreach Steering Committee (COSC), is composed of volunteers representing fire, police, schools, faith-based and non-profit organizations and businesses from communities in Washington County and northern Waukesha County.

During 2006, nine local non-profit organizations received grants totaling $46,500 from the COSC. They include: InHealth Wisconsin — $3,000 to provide teacher in-service sessions on youth depression in the Menomonee Falls, Germantown and Hamilton school districts; Citizen Advocacy of Washington County — $2,500 to expand services with a satellite office in Germantown; Germantown Police Department — $1,000 for bicycle helmets and health and safety information; Greater Menomonee Falls Adult Day Center — $2,100 for the music therapy program; Hope Network, Inc. — $2,500 to publish one issue of Network News for single mothers; Germantown Youth Futures — $710 for youth leadership training and promotional items; Menomonee Falls Teen Center — $2,000 for a room refurbishing project; and Germantown Recreation Department — $851 for the Free Spirit Childhood Library curriculum and Health Healers dog therapy for Kids Klub participants.

In addition, the COSC awarded a grant of $31,839 to the Community Outreach Health Clinic. The clinic, located at Community Memorial Hospital, serves more than 1,800 patients per year who are without health insurance.

The funds are intended to benefit the health of the broader community in support of the hospital’s mission of responding to health needs and enhancing the health status of the surrounding communities.

Submit hospital community benefit stories to Mary Kay Grasmick, editor, mgrasmick@wha.org or call 608-274-1820.

Tomah Memorial Hospital, Cumberland Memorial Hospital, and Spooner Health System are the most recent additions to the growing list of hospitals that have implemented tobacco-free policies campus wide. To date, 96 hospitals have implemented a tobacco-free policy campus wide, with 16 more preparing to enact a policy by the end of 2007.

The following hospitals are now tobacco-free campus wide:

Agnesian HealthCare/St. Agnes Hospital, Fond du Lac

All Saints-St. Mary’s Medical Center, Racine

Amery Regional Medical Center, Amery

Appleton Medical Center, Appleton

Aspirus Wausau Hospital, Wausau

Aurora BayCare Medical Center, Green Bay

Aurora Memorial Hosp. of Burlington, Burlington

Aurora Lakeland Medical Center, Elkhorn

Aurora Med. Ctr. of Manitowoc Co., Inc., Two Rivers

Aurora Med. Ctr. of Washington Co., Inc., Hartford

Aurora Medical Center, Oshkosh

Aurora Medical Center-Kenosha, Kenosha

Aurora Psychiatric Hospital, Inc., Wauwatosa

Aurora Sheboygan Memorial Medical Center, Sheboygan

Aurora Sinai Medical Center, Inc., Milwaukee

Baldwin Area Medical Center, Baldwin

Barron Medical Center—Mayo Health System, Barron

Beaver Dam Community Hospitals, Inc., Beaver Dam

Berlin Memorial Hospital, Berlin

Black River Memorial Hospital, Black River Falls

Bloomer Medical Center-, Mayo Health System, Bloomer

Bond Health Center, Oconto

Boscobel Area Health Care, Boscobel

Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin-Fox Valley, Neenah

Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin-Kenosha, Kenosha

Columbia St. Mary’s, Inc. - Columbia Campus, Milwaukee

Columbia St. Mary’s, Inc. - Milw. Campus, Milwaukee

Columbia St. Mary’s, Inc. - Ozaukee Campus, Mequon

Columbia St. Mary’s-Sacred Heart Rehab Inst., Milwaukee

Community Memorial Hospital, Menomonee Falls

Cumberland Memorial Hospital, Inc., Cumberland

Divine Savior Healthcare, Portage

Door County Memorial Hospital, Sturgeon Bay

Eagle River Memorial Hospital, Eagle River

Elmbrook Memorial Hospital, Brookfield

Flambeau Hospital, Park Falls

Franciscan Skemp Healthcare-Mayo Health Sys., Arcadia

Franciscan Skemp Healthcare-Mayo Hlth. Sys., La Crosse

Franciscan Skemp Healthcare-Mayo Health Sys., Sparta

Good Samaritan Health Center, Merrill

Grant Regional Health Center, Lancaster

Holy Family Memorial, Inc., Manitowoc

Howard Young Medical Center, Woodruff

Hudson Hospital, Hudson

Kindred Hospital Milwaukee, Greenfield

Ladd Memorial Hospital, Osceola

Lakeview Medical Center, Rice Lake

Langlade Memorial Hospital, Antigo

Luther Hospital, Eau Claire

Memorial Health Center, Medford

Mercy Health System Corporation, Janesville

Mercy Medical Center, Oshkosh

Mercy Walworth Hospital and Med. Ctr., Lake Geneva

Mile Bluff Medical Center, Mauston

Moundview Memorial Hospital & Clinics, Friendship

New London Family Medical Center, New London

Oconomowoc Memorial Hospital, Oconomowoc

Orthopaedic Hospital of Wisconsin, Glendale

Osseo Medical Center, Osseo

Our Lady of Victory Hospital, Stanley

Prairie du Chien Memorial Hospital, Prairie du Chien

Red Cedar Medical Center, Menomonie

Reedsburg Area Medical Center, Reedsburg

River Falls Area Hospital, River Falls

Riverside Medical Center, Waupaca

Riverview Hospital Association, Wisconsin Rapids

Sacred Heart Hospital, Eau Claire

Sacred Heart-St. Mary’s Hospitals, Rhinelander

Sacred Heart-St. Mary’s Hospitals, Tomahawk

Saint Clare’s Hospital, Weston

Saint Michael’s Hospital, Stevens Point

Sauk Prairie Memorial Hospital, Prairie du Sac

Southwest Health Center, Platteville

Spooner Health System, Spooner

St. Clare Hospital & Health Services, Baraboo

St. Croix Regional Medical Center, St. Croix Falls

St. Elizabeth Hospital, Appleton

St. Francis Hospital, Milwaukee

St. Joseph Regional Medical Center, Milwaukee

St. Joseph’s Hospital, Chippewa Falls

St. Mary’s Hospital, Madison

St. Mary’s Hospital Medical Center, Green Bay

St. Nicholas Hospital, Sheboygan

Stoughton Hospital Association, Stoughton

SynergyHealth St. Joseph’s Hospital, West Bend

The Monroe Clinic, Monroe

The Wisconsin Heart Hospital, Wauwatosa

Theda Clark Medical Center, Neenah

Tomah Memorial Hospital, Tomah

Tri-County Memorial Hospital, Whitehall

Vernon Memorial Healthcare, Viroqua

Watertown Memorial Hospital, Watertown

Waukesha Memorial Hospital, Waukesha

Waupun Memorial Hospital, Waupun

West Allis Memorial Hospital, West Allis

Westfields Hospital, New Richmond

The celebration of National Hospital Week began in 1921 when a magazine editor suggested that more information about hospitals might alleviate public fears about the "shrouded" institutions of the day. From that beginning, Hospital Week expanded to facilities across the nation. Today, through promotion and participation, National Hospital Week has grown into the nation’s largest health care event.

For National Hospital Week, May 6-12, 2007, we are paying tribute to the pride, professionalism and people of health care with the inspiring slogan "Care You Count On, People You Trust." A unifying theme, it spotlights the extraordinary relationship between hospitals and the communities we serve.