Copyright WEAU
CHIPPEWA FALLS, Wis. (WEAU) - The building has been closed for a year and a half. Now, patients are once again being treated in the former HSHS St. Joseph’s hospital in Chippewa Falls. The newly named ‘Chippewa Valley Cooperative Hospital’ is opening a new cancer center. 18 months ago, more than 300 cancer patients were displaced with the closure of all HSHS and Prevea services in Western Wisconsin. The closure meant some patients needed to drive hundreds of miles to receive care. “How do you choose which patients can stay and which patients might have to travel further?” Jessica Gugel, the Nurse Navigator at the cancer center, said. “Those were really difficult days.” Now, a new cancer center is up and running in the former St. Joseph’s Hospital. The Chippewa Valley Health Cooperative is opening it through its interim Chippewa Valley Cooperative Hospital. “This was a, we can’t wait,” Lee Caraher with the Chippewa Valley Health Cooperative said. “The sense of urgency that the board of directors and the doctors feel, I can’t quantify for you. It’s so heavy. It’s such a big urgency to have care.” “We were most worried about our patients and what would happen to them,” Gugel said. “So just being here now and able to serve them, it just really feels like it’s come full circle that we’re back and we’re home and our team has managed to stay together.” It’s a new start and a reunion for this team, who used to work together at the Prevea Cancer Center before it closed. “We’re just so excited to be working together again,” Gugel said. “Cancer oncology care is a special thing. There’s such an intimate relationship between the cancer carers and the cancer patients that being able to pull this team together is just such a moment of joy,” Caraher said. The cancer center started seeing patients on October 13th. On Monday, it provided its first infusion. “It just feels really good,” Gugel said. “It just feels like we can kind of pick up some of that mission that was here before, which is just to serve people and our community.” This marks the start of a new life for an old hospital with a lot to give. This is just the beginning. In around two months, the hospital plans to provide wound care services. The hope is to have the full-service interim hospital up and running in the middle of 2026.
