Leveraging Community Health for a Healthier Workforce

Corey Cronrath is a seasoned healthcare industry professional currently serving as the Service Line Medical Director for Occupational and Employee Health within the Marshfield Clinic Healthcare System. In this role, Corey oversees occupational health, a revenue-generating division that provides essential services to external employers, helping them adhere to OSHA regulations, manage workers’ compensation cases, and treat injured employees. Corey manages the employee health side, focusing on employer-specific data, safety, and injury prevention.

Please Give a Brief Overview of your Roles and Responsibilities at your Current Organization and your Journey in the Industry so Far.

As a board-certified physician executive in Occupational and Aerospace Medicine with a Master’s in Public Health and in Business Administration, I’m currently, the Service Line Medical Director (SLMD) for Occupational and Employee Health with Marshfield Clinic Health System.

Marshfield Clinic Health System is an integrated health system serving Wisconsin since 1916. The system contains several hospitals and many clinics at 60 locations in Wisconsin, as well as a medical research institute and an education division, and employs more than 1,200 doctors and other clinicians.

Occupational health is a revenuegenerating stream for hospitals that are externally facing and focused on providing the services to organizations required to meet OSHA regulations. At Marshfield Clinic Health System, we work on two fronts, one where we support the hospitals to facilitate the organizations to help manage workers’ compensation cases or the treatments of injured patients. The second front is the clinical side, or rather the employee health side. I switch my responsibilities to being an employer and only being privy to employer data and management on the safety and prevention of injuries, working with our workers’ compensation insurer on case management. As the SLMD, I’m also part of the clinical care and operational leadership team, which looks at overall system issues, from strategy to finance to organizational goals.

Before joining Marshfield Clinic Health System, I served in the US Army for many years as a staff officer, Brigade Surgeon, 10th CAB Battalion.

How have you Seen the Industry Evolve?

I have observed an encouraging trend of employers being concerned with the health of their workforce and going beyond the traditional respirator fit testing, drug testing, and different OSHA requirements for injured workers to a more holistic approach to the wellness of their workforces.

Employers are not just looking at access to healthcare but also at the social determinants of health like transportation, environment, family, homes, and social support. In the past seven years, I have observed, employers have diverted their attention from workforce transition to partnering with the overall health of the community. They have realized that workers come in and leave the organization, and they must make up for that attrition from the community itself. If you are hiring and your hiring pool is not healthy, then it’s much harder to correct the root cause. As an employer, this may increase your expenses and adversely affect the productivity of your workforce.

What Project Initiatives are you Currently Working on?

Looking at the social determinants of health and workforces, the organizations or employers are willing to engage with the state of Wisconsin for partnering together for the overall development of the community. The Wisconsin Economic Development Association is also willing to engage with community leaders and individual employers on how to address these burning issues, like better public transportation, sports, and health arenas for physical activity, and shopping malls for easy access to household items.

Planned infrastructure facilities are being developed as a result of this joint effort, and one can see walking trails and pickle-ball courts created for improving physical activities. 

I have been working with Marshfield Clinic Health System as a representative for county public health. In the state of Wisconsin, it’s really specific on the county, county public health, and then individual employers within the county on how to address these issues and how do we get the resources, available for this, whether that resource is public transportation, easy availability of groceries and fresh food or sports complex. This ensures that people are not forced to purchase their necessities from gas stations at a higher price.

Working with larger organizations like KwikTrip, with its chain of convenience stores throughout the nation, can bring fresh foods within their businesses because they’re in a lot of locations where a lot of the grocery shopping does happen, such as Neville and other small rural areas. These are some of the initiatives that we’re working on at a high level on the public health side.

Where is the Industry Heading?

A preliminary feasibility study of market conditions, operational needs, and potential obstacles is essential for the proper analysis and drafting of a successful plan.

Collecting relevant data regarding community issues is the first stage of planning. The right questions need to be asked as to how to collect the data, how clean the data is before aggregating it and basing decisions on it, and ultimately how to move forward with it.

If the workforce is struggling with the non-availability of fresh food, a lack of transportation, or childcare issues, as a community representative, I work toward collecting data on these issues. There are few platforms that address these issues. We’ve used two of them through our community center for healthcare advancement to collect data. We are also trying to partner with the payers or insurers to collect that data. Most importantly, we are approaching governmental agencies, mostly for the public’s health, to collect data on who needs what resources and how to get those resources to them. We’re still in the data collection phase, as it’s at the local level rather than the state or federal level.

On the larger level, centers of Medicare services and CMS are willing to get involved with reimbursing for social determinants, like health reimbursement to payers, or for building a better environment by investing in free transportation for employees. These issues need to be addressed from a financial standpoint; only then will we drive our community toward progress in the industry.

What would be your Piece of Advice for your Fellow Peers?

Increasing partnerships with your government’s public health departments and employers directly is crucial for community as well as organizational health. In the occupational health space and also in your chambers of commerce, if you’re able to build those environments to pool the resources in order to share data and identify the issues in your specific community, the community will develop as a whole.

The issues in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, are very different from the issues in Neville, Wisconsin. Identification of issues at their local level is very important. Once identified, creating the solution as a community is the next stage. In Eau Claire, Wisconsin, a possible solution to the transportation issue is public transportation, whereas if you’re looking at rural and smaller locations, thirdparty transportation or individuals depending on each other works as the best solution. Building those relationships builds the community. The social determinants of health, overall wellness, and prevention of disease guide the organization toward better health.