Angie McConnachie, the CEO of Marlette, Mich.-based UnitedHealthcare Partners, is the daughter of a farmer. She married a farmer. Her husband comes from a family of farmers. And one thing about farmers, Ms. McConnachie told Becker's: They're not going to take a day off work.
"It's hard enough to get them to go uptown to see a doctor. For them to go and see a specialist in the city, they have to take a whole day off," she said. "They're not going to do it."
Local care just makes sense in rural regions, like the geographical "thumb" of Michigan. For self-employed farmers, time is a limited currency. In an aging population, mobility is waning. Yet, quality care options in the region have dwindled since the pandemic, Ms. McConnachie said — sparking conversations amongst the remaining CEOs. Individually, their hospitals could not support a local specialist — but maybe, together, they could.
Two organizations were willing to take a leap of faith: Cass City, Mich.-based Hills & Dales Healthcare, helmed by CEO Andy Daniels, and Ms. McConnachie's UnitedHealthcare Partners. The pair teamed up this month to form Aspire Rural Health System, comprised of Hills & Dales' hospital, plus UnitedHealthcare Partners' Deckerville (Mich.) Community Hospital, Marlette Regional Hospital and Heartlands Marlette Senior Living.
Becker's asked Mr. Daniels why the two chose each other over a larger health system partner: "I think because, number one, we get a raw deal," he replied.
At least 37 rural hospitals have closed since 2020, collapsing care in fragile communities. A good chunk were owned by larger systems; indication that there isn't security in numbers alone, according to Mr. Daniels.
"Large systems don't know how to run us," Mr. Daniels said. "They want to turn us into band-aid stations, transfer care. They don't want to provide care in rural, and it aggravates the living daylights out of me, because we matter."
When local care crumbles, it emits a sound that might never reach corporate offices. But it awakens the likes of Mr. Daniels, Ms. McConnachie and their respective teams every day; it makes the mission personal. When the two organizations' boards met for the first time, members sat at the same table, interspersed. Ms. McConnachie said, "It was like, 'I used to work with you, or I went to school with you,' and they realized, we're the same people. We're here for the same reason."
As for the bottom line, Mr. Daniels has faith in it. When he recruits a specialist, they often question whether the area has enough patient volume; six months later, they're asking for backup.
"People in rural areas will delay care. They didn't want to have to drive two hours, three hours, however long it is to get care. They want to get care locally if they can," Mr. Daniels said. "And that's kind of our goal. When we put these three hospitals together, it allows us to expand services between the three hospitals, share those resources and expand that care."
But if the partnership ever falls to political and economic turbulence — well, at least it was a true partnership, he said. At least the stakes remained on local ground; better to try and fail than fail to try.
"What's the worst that's going to happen, right? Even if you don't try, it's still the same end result. We're still handing the keys over to somebody else," Mr. Daniels said. "So my advice [to other rural hospital CEOs] is, try hard. Try the hardest you absolutely can to protect rural healthcare, fight for rural healthcare and put the services in your community."