Welcome

In small to mid-sized rural areas across the country, hospitals that once were at the center of thriving communities are slowly disappearing. In an effort to preserve these crucial institutions, Essentia Community Hospitals and Clinics was established to ensure that residents of small communities will continue to have the quality health care that they deserve by providing access to the resources of a larger health system.

Essentia Community Hospitals and Clinics, or ECHC, was created to better organize the small-market hospitals and clinics that are a part of Essentia Health, a non-profit health system based in Duluth, Minn. ECHC brings a culture of responsive, enhanced support services to strategically align local hospital and physician practices to deliver integrated community health care.

ECHC currently owns and/or manages 11 hospitals and 27 clinics in Minnesota, Idaho, Wisconsin and Montana. Seven of our hospitals are Critical Access Hospitals, a designation by the federal government provided to rural facilities to allow hospitals greater flexibility in the delivery of services and increased revenue through Medicare cost-based reimbursement.