‘Growing’ into a new office location, company president
Seeing is believing for one area doctor
July 28, 2025
OCONTO – In a city of “about 4,000 people,” Julie Bulin – vice president of Emplify Health by Bellin Oconto Hospital – said it’s not uncommon for your healthcare provider to be your next-door neighbor.
“We get to know our patients and their families,” she said. “We know what’s important to them. We know when something’s happened in their life that may be impacting their health care or [if] they’re struggling with something [and] we can connect with them.”
Since it was founded in 2005, Bulin said the team at Emplify Health by Bellin’s Oconto Hospital have been doing exactly that – connecting with patients and providing “hometown” health care.
“You know who the people are who are caring for you, and we know who we’re caring for,” she said. “We can connect with them before they even know we’re connecting with them. So, that is incredible – you don’t get that [kind of care] in big cities.”
Bulin – a Bellin employee of 27 years – said the hospital’s staff is both excited to celebrate two decades of service to their community and honored to continue the rural hospital’s work.
“We work with our community to help educate them and give them opportunities to connect with us in other ways,” she said. “We’re continuously bringing people in, trying to connect them with resources and giving them opportunities to partner with us in ways that other organizations can’t [because] they don’t have the facilities like we do.”
History, current challenges
Two decades ago, Bulin said a collaboration between Bellin Health and the Oconto Hospital Citizen’s Foundation introduced a new level of health care to Oconto that was needed “to best serve [the] community.”
“The duo joined forces to bring a hospital to the Oconto community as a [change in regulation] was threatening to prevent the establishment of another critical care hospital in the area,” she said. “Our doors opened June 30, 2005, with four beds and an emergency department under the name Bond Health Center. Thanks to the support and investment from the community, the hospital has grown and thrived to what we have now.”
Three years after its founding, Bulin said the hospital changed its name to Oconto Hospital & Medical Center “to better reflect the comprehensive care it provided,” and several years after that, underwent a “transformative $15 million expansion.”
That expansion, she said, resulted in the addition of 46,000 square feet to the hospital’s existing 11,000-square-foot facility.
“This expansion allowed Bellin Health to introduce new services [to its Oconto hospital] – such as primary care, behavioral health, therapy, diagnostics and outpatient surgery,” she said. “The care team [also] doubled in size, and the facility was able to serve more than twice as many patients annually.”
Today, Bulin said the hospital’s team sits at roughly 380 members who “[generate] $37 million in total labor income – contributing $91 million in total annual economic impact.”
However, as the hospital and its surrounding community have grown and changed, Bulin said so have the challenges rural hospitals traditionally face.
“We know that in our rural communities, Medicare/Medicaid [insurance usage is] much higher [because] we have an aging population,” she said. “That’s another key factor in our world. We have to consider which services we should have on-site and which services we should have at a larger center.”
Though Bulin said the hospital and its team wants to “treat everybody and be able to do everything,” she also said “we have to know our limits.”
“[We have to make] sure we’re thinking about that at the forefront when we’re making decisions on which types of services [to provide] locally,” she said.
Turning back to the high rate of patients coming in with Medicare/Medicaid insurance, Bulin said that factor also impacts which services the hospital can provide, and how affordable they can be.
“Medicaid is a huge issue for us [because] it’s truly very minimal what we receive for caring for those patients,” she said. “So, it’s always a balance. How do we manage the patients and care for the patients in the best way we can [and] stay affordable? How can we sustain our viability in the community?”
That balancing act, Bulin said, is made possible, in part, by the community’s generosity.
“We look for donors to help with some of our capital campaigns… to help offset [the costs that] might come with that payer-mix challenge,” she said.
Another challenge Bulin said Emplify Health by Bellin’s Oconto Hospital navigates is patients putting off their care.
“Our patients wait until they’re really sick [because] these are stoic [people],” she said.
Patients’ stoicism, Bulin said, can at times present hospital staff with additional problems to solve if the care they require can’t be provided at their Oconto facility.
“We have a great partnership [that allows us to transport] patients down to a larger center, but these patients come so sick… it’s very scary sometimes, because we don’t have all of the resources that some of the bigger centers do,” she said.
Because Emplify Health by Bellin’s Oconto Hospital lacks the infrastructure necessary to provide care in extreme cases, Bulin said the hospital serves as a front door to larger centers for patients who require emergent care.
“We bring everybody in, and then we figure out where to [send them] where they would be best served,” she said.
Locally grown care
Though the hospital faces certain challenges inherent to its rural setting, Bulin said that doesn’t impact the quality of care provided at the Oconto facility.
“There is no difference in the care that you’ll get here [and the care] you’ll get in Green Bay,” she said. “Our quality is one of the highest in our critical access hospital arena… We see in our reports and different [studies] that come through.”
Bulin said the care is of such high quality that Emplify Health by Bellin’s Oconto Hospital historically receives awards through Chartis – which, according to its website (chartis.com), is a healthcare advisory services and analytics company.
“Chartis is a group that monitors rural hospitals across the nation, and [for] three years in a row, we have received patient experience awards for being in the top 25 [rural hospitals],” she said. “So, [there’s] amazing work going on here.”
Over her nearly four decades in the healthcare industry, Bulin said she’s come back to work for Emplify Health by Bellin on three separate occasions.
When asked what keeps her coming back, she said her first answer would be “the people.”
“We have amazing people who work in our organization,” she said. “I also truly believe we have opportunities [for employees to grow] within our organization.”
To celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Oconto hospital, Bulin said Emplify Health by Bellin is hosting a few local events, and is also “going live with our new electronic medical record” system as part of its recent merger with the Gundersen Health System.
“We worked with Gundersen – brought the providers, the clinicians and the nursing staff together – and [figured out how to] make it our platform so there’s some standardization with [our] Epic [system] between the two of us,” she said.
Growing up in the Oconto County area – in the small village of Coleman – Bulin said she takes pride in serving her community under Emplify Health by Bellin’s “patient-first” focus.
“Bellin and Emplify always put the patient first,” she said. “[It brings] me back to those roots – family, feeling a part of a team and then being able to use all those skills that obviously I grew up with in Coleman.”
Therefore, Bulin said leading a team of local healthcare providers into the hospital’s next 20 years of service makes the milestone that much more meaningful.
“Congratulations to the entire team that works here – we can’t do it without our staff and our providers [because] they are amazing individuals who truly care at their core about their community and their patients,” she said. “It’s overwhelming to think how many people in this region are impacted by our teams every day.”
