Officials at Marshfield Clinic Health System are apparently still refining plans for a new 12-bed hospital in Minocqua, despite expectations that the project was to have started this past spring and to have been completed within a year.
Corporate officials gave few details after they were asked Monday about the status of those plans. Dr. William Melms and Dr. Michael Schaars, regional medical directors for the Marshfield-based healthcare provider, released the following statement in response to that inquiry:
“Marshfield Clinic continues to move the Minocqua Hospital plans forward,” the statement says. “Our plans are being refined and vetted internally and we will provide our community more information when we are able to release more details.”
Marshfield Clinic did not provide an opportunity for a telephone interview. The Oneida County zoning office said Marshfield Clinic has not taken out a building permit for the project.
Marshfield Clinic announced in late January 2017 their plans to build a $35 million, 72,000-square-foot hospital adjacent to their Minocqua clinic and ambulatory surgery center. It immediately brought opposition from St. Louis, Missouri-based Ascension Healthcare, which said another hospital would cause financial hardship to its own hospital in Woodruff.
Ascension’s Howard Young Medical Center challenged those plans every step along the way from the Minocqua town level to Oneida County, where the county board of adjustment on Dec. 14, 2017 granted Marshfield Clinic’s request for a conditional use permit to build.
