Gundersen Health System Sends Medical Teams to Underserved Coulee Region Communities

On a cold Tuesday morning in Vernon County, a converted community center in Westby filled with residents waiting for blood pressure checks, cholesterol screenings, and brief consultations with visiting physicians from Gundersen Health System. The pop-up clinic is part of a new outreach effort designed to bring basic medical care directly to towns across the Coulee Region that lack a full-service clinic of their own.

The traveling teams, made up of rotating physicians, nurses, and medical students from Gundersen's residency programs, visit a different small community roughly twice a month, coordinating with local churches, schools, and municipal buildings to host the temporary clinics. Visits are free for basic screenings, with referrals made to Gundersen's main La Crosse campus or a regional partner clinic for anything requiring follow-up care.

A Response to Distance and Delay

Much of the Coulee Region's terrain, carved by coulees and ridges along the Mississippi River bluffs, makes travel slow even when distances look short on a map. For older residents without reliable transportation, a twenty-mile trip to La Crosse can mean losing most of a day, a barrier that health system leaders say contributes to delayed diagnoses for conditions like hypertension and diabetes.

"We noticed a pattern in our emergency department data," said a Gundersen administrator involved in launching the program. "Patients from certain townships were showing up with advanced complications from conditions that are usually manageable if caught early. The outreach program grew directly out of that pattern."

Screenings conducted at the pop-up clinics have already identified a number of patients with previously undiagnosed high blood pressure, several of whom have since been connected to ongoing primary care. Staff say the informal, community-based setting tends to draw in people who are wary of formal clinical environments or who have avoided seeking care due to cost concerns, even though the screenings themselves are free.

Training the Next Generation of Rural Physicians

The outreach program also serves a secondary purpose for Gundersen: giving medical residents direct exposure to rural practice early in their careers. Wisconsin's rural physician shortage has been a persistent concern for health systems statewide, and Gundersen leaders hope that residents who spend time in towns like Westby, Cashton, and Coon Valley will be more likely to consider rural practice after completing their training.

A chief resident who has participated in several outreach visits said the experience has changed how she thinks about her own future career path. "You see how much of a difference it makes just being there, in the community, rather than expecting people to come to you," she said. "It's a different kind of medicine."

Expanding the Model

Gundersen officials say they plan to add mental health screening and basic dental referrals to the outreach clinics later this year, based on feedback from early visits indicating strong demand for both services in areas with few local providers. They are also exploring a partnership with a mobile mammography unit to bring cancer screening services along on select outreach dates.

Funding for the program currently comes from a mix of hospital community benefit dollars and a state rural health grant, though officials acknowledge that scaling the model further will require sustained investment. For residents in the region's smaller townships, the visits have already become something to plan around, a rare instance of healthcare coming to them rather than the other way around.