Carver might take its pulse with health checkups for all

Health officials in Carver County want to perform physical exams and health assessments on all the county's adult residents -- more than 63,000 people -- with the goal of making Carver the healthiest county in the nation.

The first step of the plan was taken this week when the Carver County Board unanimously approved spending $45,000 donated by a local hospital to hire a consultant to help determine whether the idea is feasible.

"It's somewhat of a novel approach," said Carver County Administrator Dave Hemze.

If the county goes ahead with the idea, the program would entail having residents visit clinics, hospitals or doctors' offices to undergo physical exams, including blood tests, and to fill out extensive health questionnaires on everything from mental health to personal habits.

Authorities hope to collect the data over about a year, then do follow-up checks in the next three to five years to see how effective prevention and education programs prove in addressing health issues uncovered by the study.

"We're just at the very beginning stages," Rae Jean Madsen, planning development manager for the county Public Health Department, said Wednesday.

"What we're doing is taking a look at an idea. But the idea is an intriguing one," she said.

The Carver data would be used to help public and private health agencies tailor or expand programs to treat, prevent or reduce medical problems such as diabetes, obesity and high cholesterol, officials said.

"This will provide a service to the community by making a healthier county overall," Madsen said. "The outside-the-box thinking is that we could make this the healthiest county in the nation."

Medical center Rx

The idea for the communitywide survey came from Robert Stevens, CEO of Ridgeview Medical Center in Waconia.

Stevens said he was inspired by a similar health survey his company conducted last fall among its 1,300 employees that found high levels of obesity, high cholesterol and other health problems.

"I thought, 'Why not do this on a countywide level?'" said Stevens, whose company donated the $45,000 for the county feasibility study. "I think Carver County can be a model for comprehensive health, but it starts with information."

Madsen said county officials are enthusiastic about the possible health assessment but are also realistic about whether it will be practical.

Among the first questions they will seek to answer is whether anyone has ever tried to do this kind of study on such a large scale.

The size of the project means logistics will be the biggest challenge as health officials figure out how to get residents to come in for free physicals.

"It's massive," Stevens said of the project's scope. "That's what makes this intriguing, using an entire county to collect a comprehensive database."

Finally, there is no guarantee that everyone will volunteer to participate. Stevens said a participation rate of 50 percent would be considered good.

That still would produce a database with more than 30,000 charts, more than enough to make informed decisions on what kind of treatments and programs to offer county residents, Stevens said.

"I think this is pretty visionary in scope," Madsen said. "Whether it will work or not, I don't know."